How to use the bit.ly URL shortener in leenk.me

I just submitted version 1.2.11 to the WordPress repository, so you should see this update coming soon. With this update is the ability to customize your URL shortener. If the URL shortener you use has a basic REST API then it should work.

For now, leenk.me uses a custom WordPress action hook to allow you to have complete freedom of what URL shortener you use. The most common request I get is for bit.ly, so here are the instruction for switching to the bit.ly URL shortener.

First, update to leenk.me 1.2.11!

Second, add this code near the top of your theme's function.php file (after the <?php line):

function custom_leenkme_url_shortener( $api_url, $url ) {

    $bitly_api ="http://api.bitly.com/v3/shorten";

    $bitly_args = array(
                            'login' => 'ENTER_YOUR_BITLY_USERNAME',
                            'apiKey' => 'ENTER_YOUR_BITLY_API_KEY',
                            'longURL' => $url,
                            'format' => 'txt',
                            'domain' => 'bit.ly' // either bit.ly or j.mp
                        );

    return $bitly_api . '?' .  http_build_query( $bitly_args );

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

Third, make sure you replace "ENTER_YOUR_BITLY_USERNAME" with your bit.ly username and "ENTER_YOUR_BITLY_API_KEY" with your bit.ly API key.

This should do it, your URLs should be automatically shortened with your bit.ly account.

If you want to use another URL shortener, contact me and I'll try to get you some code to use instead of the bit.ly example above.

Posted in Custom URL Shorteners, News, plugin, Twitter | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

Facebook “Share” Link Now Available (Kind Of)

UPDATE: Currently the "share" link only appears on Profiles not Fan Pages. If you are posting to a Fan Page you should not enable the Share Link until Facebook fixes this.

Hello Everyone, One of the most common emails I get for the leenk.me Facebook module is about the lack of the "share" link on a Facebook post. This has always been a limitation imposed on third-party developers by the Facebook API. This morning I was looking into open bug reports on Facebook for some outstanding issues and I noticed that Facebook has a method called links. Without going into too much detail, the normal method used by leenk.me to post to Facebook is the feed method.

There are pros and cons to both options. With feed you can customize pretty much everything about your post (but it doesn't include the share link). With links you can only customize the message, Facebook will determine what it thinks should be the Link Name, Caption, Description and Image. Normally Facebook does a decent job of this, but sometimes it is way off. In my testing Facebook included a "share this" image or the site's header image for a post that had no image in it. I tested a post  with only a single word in the content and Facebook used completely different text from my test site. But other tests worked beautifully. I suspect if you use your posts normally, include a main image in the post and have decent content, then Facebook will not have a problem getting the correct content for the link information.

So, when you update to leenk.me 1.2.8, you will see a new option: "Include Share Link?" found under the Facebook module. If you check this and save the settings, the ability to customize the Link Name, Caption, Description, and Image will be disabled. You may find that Facebook does a great job on your site of figuring out what the content and image should be. Hopefully Facebook will be expanding this method in the future to allow us to customize these fields. At the very least, if the share link is important to you, then this is the method of achieving it.

Posted in Facebook | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

How to use the leenk.me LinkedIn plugin for WordPress

The anatomy of a LinkedIn post...

Default LinkedIn Settings

Default Comment – You can use this option to set a default comment or format that will be sent to LinkedIn whenever you publish a new post. You can use the %TITLE%, %WPSITENAME%, or %WPTAGLINE% format options.

Default Link Name - You can use this option to set a default link name or format that will be sent to LinkedIn whenever you publish a new post. You can use the %TITLE%, %WPSITENAME%, or %WPTAGLINE% format options.

Default Image URL - You can use this to specify a default image URL to use for your LinkedIn messages.

Example Default Image URL: https://leenk.me/example.png

Share Categories – Select which categories to include or exclude from LinkedIn

Default Share Categories: Include All Categories

Share All Authors – The leenk.me plugin suite allows you to take advantage of multiple authors on your WordPress website. Each author can setup a leenk.me account and insert their leenk.me API key into the plugin. If you have multiple authors publishing to your WordPress website then you will want to have this box checked to ensure that your LinkedIn posts get sent properly.

Post Specific Settings

Custom Comment - You can use this option to customize the comment that gets sent to LinkedIn. You can use the %TITLE%, %WPSITENAME%, or %WPTAGLINE% format options.

Custom Link Name - You can use this option to customize the link name that gets sent to LinkedIn. You can use the %TITLE%, %WPSITENAME%, or %WPTAGLINE% format options.

Custom Description- You can use this option to customize the message that gets sent to LinkedIn. Alternatively, you can use the Post Excerpt if your WordPress theme has it enabled.

Image URL – The Default Image URL (mentioned above) can be modified in two ways. If your theme supports Featured Images you can add a new image to your post an mark it as the Featured Image. The leenk.me plugin will then automatically use that image URL for LinkedIn. If your theme does not support Featured Images, then you can simply add the URL to the image you want o use in the Image URL box.

Exclude from LinkedIn – Check this box if you wish to exclude posting this specific post from your LinkedIn account.

ReShare – The ReShare option only appears for published posts. It allows you to resend the published post to your LinkedIn account.

Posted in LinkedIn, News, plugin | Tagged , | 14 Comments

leenk.me 1.2.0 – LinkedIn support!

Version 1.2.0 of the leenk.me plugin has been released. Be sure to check your plugin dashboard for the update. With support for the LinkedIn social network! I tried to get it out last month, so forgive me... I'm a day late! As always, I wrote a post and made a video tutorial explaining the basics. You can use the contact form if you run into any trouble.

How to Use the leenk.me LinkedIn plugin for WordPress

Posted in LinkedIn, News, plugin | Comments Off on leenk.me 1.2.0 – LinkedIn support!

leenk.me 1.1.8 update

Version 1.1.8 of the leenk.me plugin has been released. Be sure to check your plugin dashboard for the update. I changed some of the code to make it a little more readable, but I also fixed a couple bugs and added a new feature.

  1. Fixed a bug that caused WordPress shorttags to show up in Facebook and Google Buzz posts.
  2. Fixed a bug that caused posts in an excluded category to still post.
  3. Added support for Pages and Custom Post types. You need to have WordPress 2.9+ for Page support and 3.0+ for Custom Post type support.

Yesterday was a weird day, Facebook broke their API for some Fan Pages. It seems to have cleared early this morning. If you run into any more problems, please let me know.

Posted in Facebook, Google Buzz, News, plugin, Twitter | Comments Off on leenk.me 1.1.8 update

leenk.me 1.1.7 – SSL Verify Fix

Just committed an update to the leenk.me plugin. I've had a couple reports from users with old version of cURL who could not post to leenk.me because it could not verify the SSL certificate. Without going into too much detail, the SSL certificate I purchased for leenk.me is a new and old web browsers may not know how to verify the trusted source, this includes old version of cURL.

The only way around this is to tell WordPress to not worry about verifying the SSL certificate when it communicated with leenk.me. The content will still be encrypted and sent without a problem, it is just automatically trusted.

If you run into any issues, let me know.

Posted in News, plugin | Comments Off on leenk.me 1.1.7 – SSL Verify Fix

leenk.me 1.1.6 – Now even more secure!

You may have noticed today that there was an update for leenk.me. It was a small update, just changed the API url to use SSL (Secure Socket Layer). This adds an extra level of security to leenk.me. Instead of sending API key to leenk.me through normal HTTP protocal, it encrypts the key and sends it over. There is a pretty low risk of someone hijacking your API key since it mostly server-to-server communication. But it is important to me to make leenk.me as secure as possible and this was the next step.

Download the latest version of leenk.me at the WordPress plugin repository

So, this wasn't a huge update but it was needed.

In other news, we hit the 300 activate leenk.me subscribers mark! Maybe we should have a party when we hit 500...

Posted in News, plugin | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on leenk.me 1.1.6 – Now even more secure!

New Facebook Options Available in leenk.me v1.1.5

With the latest version of leenk.me, you can now truly craft your Facebook postings. Check out this short video to see some of the new features added into the Facebook plugin.

Also, check out the anatomy of a Facebook post...

P.S. Linked In is coming soon!

Posted in Facebook, News, plugin | 2 Comments

Our 1 Month Anniversary – Thank You!

I really want to thank everyone for making leenk.me the success that it has been so far.

Today is exactly 1 month since leenk.me was first soft-launched. Apart from a couple issues with PayPal and a few bugs that needed to be squashed, everything has been going really smoothly and it has been very exciting. leenk.me had over 175 accounts created since August 9th and added Google Buzz support to the plugin. Linked In is on our radar for the next social network to be supported. We're also working on a decent self-help section for the site. Of course if you need any help, our contact form is always available. I am also trying to find a good way for users to be able to add multiple social networks (of the same type) to a single leenk.me account -- but that probably won't be available until later this year. I have a few more ideas in the back of my mind... but I won't spill the beans until the ideas are a little more mature.

I really hope leenk.me is working well for everyone, if you have any recommendations or trouble with the service, please let me know.

Thanks again everyone!

Posted in News | Comments Off on Our 1 Month Anniversary – Thank You!

How to use the leenk.me Google Buzz plugin for WordPress

UPDATE

Google Buzz has been killed by Google. It no longer works with leenk.me.

Posted in Google Buzz, plugin | 2 Comments