Getting ready

I must admit that I was very skeptical at first about the use of Twitter for a blog. However, I decided to give it a try and found it really helpful. It is a great way to get in touch with other bloggers, interact with your readers, and promote your blog posts. By the way, my twitter URL is http://twitter.com/catswhocode, so don't hesitate to get in touch with me!

However, similar to your RSS feed, in order to invite visitors to your twitter account you have to promote it on your blog—this way your readers will know that you're using Twitter. In my opinion, the best way to tell your readers about your twitter account is to display your tweets on your blog. In this recipe, we'll see how to do it—with and without a plugin.

My favorite Twitter plugin for WordPress is, by far, Twitter Tools—created by Alex King who has released numerous popular WordPress plugins, such as Simple tagging or Share This.

The Twitter Tools plugin is great because it offers so many possibilities; for example, if your theme uses widgets, you can simply drag the Twitter Tools widget to your sidebar and you're done! Twitter Tools also gives you the choice between displaying only your latest Twitter entry or latest page.

How to do it...

How it works...

In order to display your latest Twitter entries, the Twitter Tools plugin uses PHP to parse your Twitter RSS feeds. RSS feeds parsing will be discussed in detail in the following recipe.