Adding A Twitter Feed To Your School Website

Category: Customer Training

Published: December 31, 2013

In the latest of our guest blog posts by members of the Webanywhere team (you can see the first, by James, here), Becca, from our Support team, explains how you add a Twitter feed to your School Jotter website.

These days Twitter is being used all over the Internet, and it’s a great way to keep people updated on what is going on in your school. By integrating Twitter into your School Jotter 2 website, you will be able to Tweet news and updates about your school, straight from your smartphone directly on to a webpage.

At Webanywhere, we’re seeing more and more schools using this feature – and of course the Support team and I are always there to help out. We also have a training manual that customers can use – but for everyone else, I wanted to show how easy it is to install and use this feature.
Before we start, you will need to ensure that you have access to either a personal or the school Twitter account. Once you have this you can follow the steps below.

Gaining a Twitter Access Token
1. Navigate to https://dev.twitter.com and sign in using your Twitter account details.
2. Click on the small arrow head to the right of your Twitter profile image and select My Applications.

3. Click Create a new application, give this a name and description, and enter the schools website address. Ensure that the Callback URL field is blank. Tick the Yes, I agree box to accept the Developers Rules of the Road, enter the Captcha code and click on the Create your Twitter application button.

5. Once you see the message informing you that the application has been successfully created, you need to then click on the Create my access token button at the bottom of the page. This will then create your access token.

6. You now need to check that Twitter has allowed School Jotter 2 access. Open a new tab in your browser and go to www.twitter.com. Log into your Twitter account, go to Settings, select Apps and check that School Jotter 2 has access.

7. Click back on the dev.twitter.com tab and the access token should now be there. Click on the OAuth tool tab to copy and paste the 4 tokens/keys into Manage > Settings > Twitter (on School Jotter 2 once logged in).

 

Adding The Twitter Feed

1. Navigate to the relevant page on your School Jotter 2 website and click Edit Page.

2. Click Insert Item and choose the Twitter option.
3. Click Insert Twitter here and then enter the details of the Twitter feed that you would like to display on the website (ensure that the username does not include the @).
4. Once you have configured the options for how the Twitter feed displays, you then need to click Save Page > Save and Publish Page.
And that’s it! You can now keep your school website up to date in the quickest, most easiest way possible. If you’re a customer and want to set up a Twitter feed on your school website, but need a bit of help, just give me a call. I’ll be happy to help.