Twitter Commenters is a plugin for Movable Type that enables commenters to sign-in and comment on your blog using their Twitter account. Versions 2+ includes support for Twitter's OAuth authorization system and enables commenters to automatically share their comments to their Twitter stream.
Note: Version 2.1 fixes a serious bug when using OAuth, users would get a Comment Submission Error, saying that Name and Email are required. All sites running v2.0 should upgrade to v2.1 using the download link below. Simply upload the new files, no need to adjust settings or templates
Basic Auth (default):
OAuth:
Twitter comment authentication works like other auth methods in MT -- once you have installed the plugin you can enable Twitter as one of the auth options, as shown in the image above.
How It Works - Basic Auth
When the user enters their Twitter username and password in the form (shown above), the plugin submits those to the Twitter API to verfiy the credentials. If verified, the user can then post comments using their Twitter account. Their Twitter 'display name' will be shown beside their comments, and their Twitter avatar (profile photo) will be imported and shown beside their comments (if userpics are enabled in your templates).
Note that users' Twitter passwords are not stored in the MT database. An upcoming version of this plugin will enable Twitter's new OAuth support, in which case passwords would never be sent to MT at all. That version will like have an option for commenters to cc. their comments to their Twitter account. Stay tuned.
How It Works - OAuth
New in Version 2.0, you can optionally enable Twitter's new OAuth authorization system. With OAuth, user never have to submit their password info to your server. Instead, they click a "sign in with Twitter" button and they are taken to a page on Twitter.com asking them to authorize the application (see image above). One they click "Allow" they are returned to your site and they then post comments using their Twitter account. As with basic auth, their Twitter 'display name ' will be used as well as their Twitter avatar (profile photo).
Share Comments on Twitter
A new feature in version 2.0, only supported via OAuth, enables commenters to optionally share their comment to their Twitter stream. All they have to do is click a checkbox, no need to re-authorize or enter Twitter account info.
Try it Now
MT Hacks has the new OAuth method enabled. Try it now:
Click here to login with your Twitter account. After logging in, you will be returned to this entry, and you can leave a comment below.
Requirements
- Net::Twitter 2.07 perl module (included with plugin) (note: do not upgrade to version 2.9+ of this module)
- Net::Twitter::OAuth perl module (included with plugin)
- Net::OAuth perl module (included with plugin)
- Net::OAuth::Simple perl module (included with plugin)
- JSON::Any perl (included with plugin)
Note: Net::Twitter requires newer versions of the libwww-perl collection of Perl modules. I am not sure what the minimum version required is, but on my server, I had to upgrade in order to get Net::Twitter to work. So if you get strange errors, try installing the latest version in your 'extlib' directory of your MT. Update: A common error message is: "Can't locate object metho