The New and Improved leenk.me API and Account Settings

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone, I just submitted version 1.4.0 of the leenk.me plugin, which uses the new version of the leenk.me API. As I have mentioned over the past few posts, Facebook has made some changes to their API which will affect leenk.me. Namely, tomorrow, May 2nd, Facebook is removing the “offline access” token which is what leenk.me uses to post on your behalf without you needing to be logged into Facebook. They have replaced this with a 60-day expiring token, which means you will most likely need to refresh your Facebook account on leenk.me every 60 days. Hopefully Facebook will make this a little less annoying before the next 60 days. If not, I apologize, but it is completely out of my control.

If you have updated to leenk.me 1.4.0 it will not work unless you update your account settings. I’ve made a short video explaining what you need to do. Basically, you should only need to “click the big red button”. If you have been using the BETA, you should upgrade to version 2.0.0b5 which includes the new API.

I know there are many users out there who have had to create multiple leenk.me accounts. With this new Account Settings page, you will probably be able to switch to a single account. This is where things could get confusing. The new way Facebook handles this is that it will change the access token every time you connect it to a different leenk.me account, breaking your other leenk.me accounts. So if you have three Basic accounts that all use the same Facebook account, two of them will most likely stop working sometime in the future. My solution fixes this, it allows you to create multiple API keys in a single account. So you simply add your Facebook to one account and create multiple API keys in that account depending on your needs. Each API can use the same Facebook account if you want it to, it just can’t be used in separate leenk.me accounts.

Also, if you had a Basic account, you will be able to add up to 3 API keys. If you had a Plus account, you will be able to add up to 10 API keys. I also renamed the plans to Personal and Business.

I tried to test this out as much as I could in the short time that I had, so if you have any problems, contact me and I will help you as soon as possible.

Posted in Facebook, News, plugin | 10 Comments

leenk.me Changes Coming Soon!

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone!

The last few days have been pretty crazy, trying to get things in place for the upcoming Facebook changes has forced my hand into making some changes to the leenk.me service. These changes were already planned for the near future, but now they’re becoming a reality. I’ve also had to place the 2.0 BETA version of the plugin on hold while I update the site/account options.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the new account setting pages that I’ve been working on:

Each account will be able to create multiple API keys!

If you have a single Basic account, you won’t have to worry about any of these things. Due to the changes that Facebook is going to make on May 2nd, this will severely affect how people with multiple Basic or Plus accounts use the service. In many cases, if you had 2 or 3 separate Basic accounts, all using the same Facebook profile, you’ll be able to go down to 1 Basic account!

I haven’t nailed everything down yet, but I am currently thinking that Basic accounts will get 3 APIs, Plus accounts will get 10 APIs, and I’ll probably discontinue the Basic account option for future customers.

Also, one last thing, when the new account settings pages are live, I’ll release a new version of the plugin which will use a new version of the leenk.me API. To use this, you’ll need to go through an “account conversion” process to convert your existing leenk.me settings to the new account methodology. This will be true for everyone, but it should be pretty straight forward and not very difficult to deal with.

I’ll let you all know as I finalized these details! Until then, happy blogging!

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Dr. Walt – Another Happy Customer

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

A few weeks ago one of my great leenk.me customers, Dr. Walt emailed me because he was having trouble with leenk.me not automatically publishing to his social networks. It took about a week to test what was happening, but eventually I discovered (with the help of my WordPress developer friend Alan Knox) that the Subscribe2 plugin was causing the issue. Basically, Dr. Walt had so many subscribers to his blog that the Subscribe2 was overloading his MySQL instance. Then leenk.me would run and it couldn’t contact the MySQL server. I wasn’t able to reproduce this but my friend Alan started to have the same exact problem on his personal blog. Alan’s solution was easy, he switched to the free version of MailChimp. But that solution wasn’t going to work for Dr. Walt because Dr. Walt posts twice a day to his blog, Alan only posted once a day (which is the smallest increment supported by MailChimp’s RSS reader).

Well, once we figured out exactly what was happening, I tried to raise the priority of the leenk.me plugin (so it would fire before the Subscribe2 plugin). And to everyone’s pleasure, it worked! leenk.me and Subscribe2 did exactly what they were suppose to do. Dr. Walt was so happy with the out coming and the level of support he got, he offered to send me one of his books!

Thanks Dr. Walt!

Posted in Just for Fun | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Facebook Changes Coming

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to give you all a head up that Facebook is making some changes that will (and for some people already have) affect leenk.me. I’ve notice a few people who have had an “expiration” time attached to the access token that Facebook give leenk.me. The access token is what allows leenk.me to send content on your behalf when you publish a new post. The way Facebook use to work is 3rd party developers like myself could request an access token with “offline access”, which basically meant it worked forever (or until the user changed their password or remove the app from their profile). Facebook is now planning on removing the offline access ability from their API. So, in preparation for this change (which is coming May 2nd, 2012), I have been testing their new requirements and have already made a few changes to leenk.me to start to deal with what Facebook is requiring. Over the next week I will continue to make changes until I have a solution in place that will cause YOU the least amount of pain.

So far it is going well though. I’ve removed the request for the “offline access” and have set my app in Facebook to disable that feature altogether. Facebook is handle these access tokens in two ways, it will hand out a token that expires in 2-hours or a token that will expire in 60-days. I am still testing the 60-day tokens to make sure they will work as I expect them to. It looks like I will be able to “renew” the 60-day tokens before they expire to get a new 60-day token. Basically replicating the previous “offline access” token I was able to use. However, in the case that I am unable to do this, it may require you to reset your Facebook connection to leenk.me every 60 days.

While I am working on this, I have also started implement some new error reporting within the beta version of the leenk.me plugin. Ultimately, this change by Facebook is pushing back the development of the plugin, but I think in the end we’ll all be better off. There will be better error reporting and more helpful messages.

Facebook is by far that social network that I end up having to do the most support for. Let’s just say that they do not handle the oAuth standard in a “traditional” manner. As I said, my goal here is to make this as simple as possible and not require you to do any extra work. Hopefully that goal will be accomplished. If you have any questions or need any support, as always, feel free to contact me.

Posted in Facebook | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

New BETA version 2.0.0b4 released and other news…

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone, We’re getting closer to a new version of leenk.me. Just made some more fixes to the 2.0.0 beta, thanks to everyone who has helped me test. You can download the new version here. I’m still getting questions about Google+, and trust me, I haven’t forgotten about it. Google still hasn’t opened up their API for writes (it’s read-only). As soon as they open it up, I’ll be working to add it. I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter on the internet from Google+ developers. They’re all just waiting for Google to open up the API so they can start writing their apps.

So, if I don’t get any bug reports about this BETA, it’ll become the official version of leenk.me. Thanks again for all the testing!

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LinkedIn Groups and a New BETA!

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone, been working hard on two versions of leenk.me! First, I found out that LinkedIn Groups have been added to LinkedIn’s API. So I wanted to add that to the plugin as soon as possible. It is in the latest release version of the plugin (version 1.3.12) as well as the latest version of the beta (2.0.0b3). It is also still a little experimental. I’ve tested it to the best of my ability, and for some reason the LinkedIn developers made the API a little different from the regular sharing API. So you may see it a little different. If you have any questions, contact me.

I’ve had a few people testing the BETA for me and the last version had a few big bugs that needed to be squashed. I believe it is getting much more stable now, so I released a new version of the BETA, available here. It would be great if any of you had the time to test it. I think you’ll be much happier with this version. If I do not get any negative feedback, I will make this version the next release of the plugin.

I’ve also been getting a lot of questions about Google+. Yes, Google+ is on my radar :) … they killed the Buzz API a few months ago, but still haven’t opened up the Google+ API for posting. Currently it only support read-only requests. As soon as I find out that they’ve opened it up for posting, I’ll be adding it to the leenk.me service. Hopefully it’s coming real soon!

Again, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me.

Posted in News, plugin | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

leenk.me 2.0.0 – Beta Release

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Lew Ayotte

Hey Everyone, been working hard on a new update to the leenk.me plugin. I’ve only tested this in WordPress 3.2+, but it should work fine in WordPress 3.1. It *might* work in previous version, but I didn’t test them. If you’re not on the latest release version of WordPress you should be (for security reasons).

Here are some of the new features available in leenk.me 2.0.0:

  • Built-in URL Shortener Options
  • Automatic preview of your post before it is sent to your social network
  • Major code changes to improve efficiency
  • and more!

Click here to download the leenk.me 2.0.0 BETA release.

Check out this short video I made of the new plugin…

Contact me here if you have any trouble with the beta version.

Posted in News, plugin | Tagged | Leave a comment

Google Buzz is Dead…

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Lew Ayotte

As many of you were aware, Google announced that they were going to kill off Google Buzz. It looks like they finally shut off the Google Buzz API, which means the leenk.me service can no longer post to your Google Buzz accounts. Please upgrade your plugin to remove the Google Buzz options.

If you’d like some more information about this, please read Google’s Fall Sweep announcement. As soon as Google opens up their Google+ API for posting, I will be adding it to the leenk.me service.

P.S. I’m working on a pretty big update for the plugin, should have a lot of nice new features. Including the ability to change your URL shortener, a better interface to see what your posts will look like on the fly, and I expect it will be a lot more efficient! Coming soon :) .

Posted in Google Buzz | 2 Comments

How to use the is.gd URL shortener with leenk.me

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Lew Ayotte

I’ve written about using bit.ly and su.pr before, but this is how you can use the is.gd URL shortener — if that’s your cup of tea. To use the is.gd URL shortener, simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file:

function custom_leenkme_url_shortener( $api_url, $url ) {  

	$isgd_api ="http://is.gd/create.php";  

	$isgd_args = array(
				'url' => $url,
				'format' => 'simple'
			);  

	return $isgd_api . '?' .  http_build_query( $isgd_args );  

}
add_filter( 'leenkme_url_shortener', 'custom_leenkme_url_shortener', 10, 2 );

And that’s it. By the way, I’m working on a big update for the leenk.me plugin, so you won’t have to use this code anymore. It will be integrated right into the plugin’s user interface.

Let me know if you run into any trouble.

Posted in Custom URL Shorteners, plugin | 2 Comments

It’s official, we have over 1,000 active leenk.me subscribers!

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Lew Ayotte

Wow, over 1,000 leenk.me subscribers! I am amazed that this service has been as popular as it has been. And I still have a lot of plans for the future of leenk.me!

How it started

When I started the leenk.me service, I was seriously afraid that no one would be interesting in subscribing to the service. As many of you know, leenk.me started out as a plugin named RF TwitterPost. When we found out that Twitter was killing their basic auth API and moving to a strict oAuth API we did not know how we were going to handle it. We actually sent out a survey to all the TwitterPost users and asked them if they would be interested in a pay-service like leenk.me. A resounding majority said they would not pay for this service. But I took a leap of faith, put some money down on a server and started it up. Within the first day I was already shocked by the number of people who showed interested and subscribed. And now, not even a year later we have over 1,000 subscribers!

Who uses leenk.me?

I’ve seen a huge variety of clients. People who own WordPress e-commerce stores and want to Tweet/Facebook/etc. whenever they add a new product (or group of products). News organizations who want to send a message out whenever they publish a new story. Religious organizations that want to keep their followers apprized of the happenings in their congregations. Lawyers who send out weekly tips. Real Estate agency who want to keep you apprised of the latest real estate news. And yes, the occasional spammer or porn website.

I remember the first time a spammer signed up, they joined the Plus account and added over 100 domains. Luckily they weren’t the cause of any major problems, but the first time the leenk.me service had an outage was caused by someone who tried publishing over 1,000 stories in less than a minute. Obviously, I never anticipated someone doing something so crazy :) . So I’ve learned a lot about maintaining a piece of software like this. I’ve had to upgrade the leenk.me servers 4 times since I started the project. And this is why I charge for the plugin, though I am trying to keep the price as low as possible. There is a lot of money in keeping a server running.

What you never knew!

I’ve never gone public with this, only a few of my friends know… but I actually donate 10% of all my net revenue from leenk.me to the WordPress foundation. Why? Well, WordPress is an open-source product, I try to contribute to it by providing patches and opening tickets for problems, but sometimes I’m too busy to even do that. I know many business owners who use WordPress and are making tons of money from this freely available software. I think it is important to give back to the community that is enabling us to make money. After all, if the software continues to thrive, our businesses should continue to thrive. So, every time you pay leenk.me, you’re actually contributing a little to the WordPress foundation. Of course, if you want to give more to the WPF, you can here: http://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/

I want to thank you all for continuing to support leenk.me. As always, if you have any trouble, let me know via my contact form.

Posted in News | Tagged | 4 Comments