We started doing a few small changes to WordTwit the other day, expecting those changes to amount to no more than a bug release. In the last 24 hours though, we’ve ended up completely overhauling WordTwit to the point where it really has to be a major release. So without further ado, we’d like to introduce WordTwit 2.0.

WordTwit 2.0 incorporates several key features, the most prominent of which is the local generation of short URLs. If you use Twitter, chances are that you’re familiar with URL shortening services such as tinyurl.com and bit.ly. While those services work well for URL shortening, they have the disadvantage of not being branded to your site or your Twitter account. To that end, we’ve added the ability in WordTwit for your own WordPress installation to act as a URL shortener. So if you had a website with an address of www.duaner.org, WordTwit will let you generate short URLs of the form duaner.org/Xa.

You can also instruct WordTwit to use a different URL for URL shortening purposes. For example, if your website is at somereallylongdomainname.com, and you own shortname.org, you can configure WordTwit to use the latter for URL generation (assuming both point to the same location).

Wait, that’s not all! We’ve also added the ability to track the number of times each shortened URL is clicked — you can view these directly in the WordTwit administration panel. In addition, WordTwit can be configured to show a banner on all external links — from this banner visitors can follow you on Twitter and read your recent blog postings. You can see an example of the banner by following this WordTwit URL => http://duaner.org/FHY.

If you’re using the built-in WordTwit URL shortener, you can also enable an option to dynamically convert all links in your post content to shortened URLs. When used in conjunction with the banner feature, you’ll be able to personally brand all links to other peoples’ sites that originate from your site.

WordTwit can now also be controlled by tags and/or categories. For example, you could configure WordTwit to only tweet new posts that have a specific tag/category. You can also do the reverse, and instruct WordTwit to ignore posts that have a certain tag/category.

And there you have it. There are a few smaller changes as well, but you’ll just have to download and install version 2.0 to check those out yourself. We’re really excited to hear what everyone thinks of the changes.

To get the new version, please visit the WordPress respository, or auto-upgrade from the WordPress plugin page.