Going to Twitter and writing a 140 character Tweet is not a difficult proposition for anyone. However, if you’ re posting to your WordPress site and want to announce it through Twitter, it is an unnecessary step provided you install The WP-to-Twitter plugin by Jol Dolson. Simply put the WP-to-Twitter posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress site when you make a post. It can be configured to use a number of URL shortening services including Su.pr, Bit.ly, Yourls, Goo.gl and WordPress. (Personally I use Goo.Gl.) WP-to-Twitter also includes google analytics integration, so you track which tweets are driving traffic to specific areas of your site.
The plugin can be configured to send a simple default message when your updating or editing posts or pages, and also allows you to write a custom Tweet when you want to. Both the custom Tweet texts and your default messages support a variety of shortcodes to substitute your blog title, post title, etc., in your tweeted update.
Shortcodes available in post update templates:
#title#: the title of your blog post#blog#: the title of your blog#post#: a short excerpt of the post content#category#: the first selected category for the post#date#: the post date#url#: the post URL#author#: the post author#account#: the twitter @reference for the account (or the author, if author settings are enabled and set.)#tags#: your tags modified into hashtags. See options in the Advanced Settings section, below.You can also create custom shortcodes to access WordPress custom fields by using doubled square brackets around the name of your custom field to add the value of that custom field to your status update. Example: [[custom_field]]
Should you post anything which is longer than the available space it will be truncated by the plugin. This applies to both the default messages and to your custom messages. I just set up the plugin and