Yesterday we were contacted by the Twitter API team and informed that WordTwit Pro‘s use of the API was not inline with the Twitter’s terms of service for third-party applications. The reasons given by the Twitter API team were:

“[WordTwit Pro] facilitates serial posting across multiple accounts, tweet/retweet automation, tweet branding and automated affiliate advertising.”

After reviewing the alleged violations by the Twitter API team, we are of the opinion that the reasons given are not justified based on the typical use cases of WordTwit Pro users.

First, WordTwit Pro does allow a user to push a tweet out to multiple accounts simultaneously. This feature is meant to simplify management of a website where new post information would routinely by posted to multiple accounts. For example, a WPtouch-related post on BraveNewCode could be pushed to the @wptouch and @bravenewcode Twitter accounts. This functionality is by no means specific to WordTwit Pro; it exists in almost all Twitter clients available today.

Second, while WordTwit Pro does allow a user to automate certain tweets or retweets, all of these essentially have to come at the request of the end-user. This represents a form of tweet scheduling, which is also a standard feature in many Twitter services and clients.

With regards to tweet branding and affiliate advertising, we are ultimately at a loss. Other than the WordTwit Pro application registered with Twitter (which ultimately causes each tweet to be associated with WordTwit Pro), there is no branding on tweets done by BraveNewCode or WordTwit Pro. Each user has the ability to manually edit a tweet before it goes out, which is no different than most Twitter clients. We also provide a very detailed Tweet Log in WordTwit Pro, which shows every tweet that is generated by WordTwit Pro, even if they were not successfully tweeted.

Ultimately Twitter has suspended the OAuth token currently used by WordTwit Pro, which has caused WordTwit Pro installations using the default configuration to stop working. We have tried to communicate with the Twitter API team to work towards resolving the misunderstanding, but as of right now the token is suspended and they have not responded to our most recent attempts to open a dialog or to educate them further about our product.

To simplify the process of setting up WordTwit Pro, we included a generic WordTwit Pro OAuth token registered with Twitter. Since we do not know the nature of the original complaint with Twitter, we can only assume a person or company witnessed some form of SPAM associated with an installation of WordTwit Pro and reported the application in violation. Since we do not control any portion of a WordTwit Pro installation or any tweets that are generated once a user installs the software, we are unable to intervene when any users potentially abuse the product.

Going forward we are forced to remove the default token within WordTwit Pro; this means all end-users will have to register a custom application with Twitter to use with their installation. That also means each user will be responsible for abiding by Twitter’s terms of service for use of the Twitter API. Since the feature to add a custom OAuth application already exists within WordTwit Pro, current installations already using this feature are not affected by the revoked token.

If you have been affected by this, please visit this page for information on how to create a custom application with Twitter and configure WordTwit Pro to use it.

We will release version 3.3 of WordTwit Pro shortly, which will require custom applications for new installations. If you have been using the custom application feature already and you upgrade, your installation should not be affected by this change.

We apologize to anyone who has been affected by this incident, but as the token was revoked by Twitter without any prior warning, we were not able to resolve any concerns without the downtime experienced by customers.

Dale Mugford (our design lead & co-founder) recently did a video interview with Freelance Journalist James Woodcock regarding the release of WordTwit Pro, our premium WordPress to Twitter (and soon Facebook!) publishing tool.

James asks a variety of questions and delves into the details regarding impetus, feature set, and future plans for the new plugin.

Runs about 30 mins.

You can watch the video below, or see a larger version on James’ site, here.

This is a general notice to all visitors who currently do not have a License for our WPtouch Pro, WordTwit Pro or Piggy products.

As of September 1st, 2011 The Community Forums on our Support site are being discontinued in favour of community support for our free products through the WordPress.org support forums.

All Community Forums will be removed and become inaccessible via bravenewcode.com/support.

You will still be able to access community support for our free products via WordPress’ forums.

Customers with Licenses for any of our premium plugins will not be affected by this change.

WordPress 3.2 has two changes that may affect some users: the minimum PHP and MySQL versions required will be PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. That means PHP 4 will no longer be supported by WordPress itself.

As a plugin developer, PHP 4 definitely makes life more complicated. Plugins end up becoming bloated when you need to have separate code for both PHP 4 and PHP 5. Removing the dependency on PHP 4 allows WordPress to remove old code and help streamline the entire codebase.

What does that mean for the users of our products?

Both WPtouch Pro and Piggy currently work with later versions of PHP 4 currently. Some time after WordPress 3.2 comes out, we will deprecate support for PHP 4.

Internally our policy has always been to try (when possible) to support the last two major versions, so when 3.2 comes out we’ll be supporting it and 3.1. But as development proceeds on the next version of WordPress, we’ll remove the PHP 4 aspects from our code and start using PHP 5 exclusively. That allows the code to be smaller, newer (usually more efficient) and we can use PHP 5 functions only, which in general results in a faster development cycle.

WordTwit Pro, which has just been released requires PHP 5 already.

So if you’re a WordPress user you should start looking at what your host provides in PHP support to make sure you’re ready when 3.2 is released. On many hosts switching to PHP 5 is as simple as clicking a button in the hosting control panel, and on others you can usually add a small snippet to your .htaccess file. Unfortunately there are still some hosts that do not provide PHP 5 at all, and for those you will probably have to find an alternate host, or explain to them why they should add support immediately to allow their customers to upgrade their WordPress installations.

WordPress, Meet Twitter

Today we’re excited to reveal what we’ve been working on for the past few months: WordTwit Pro, our premium version of WordTwit, the best WordPress to Twitter publishing plugin.

In WordTwit Pro you have complete publishing control over the tweets you send out using its sleek new publishing widget. Set schedule, repeat & delay options for a new status update; select and publish to multiple Twitter accounts; Authorize those account for shared use among other WordPress authors on your site; easily add custom hashtags and more— all on-the-fly in a few clicks with the new WordTwit Pro publishing widget.

Multiple Accounts

Multiple Account Bliss

In WordTwit Pro you can easily setup multiple Twitter accounts for publishing. And it’s easy to decide which accounts WordTwit Pro will publish to, on a completely per-post basis.

WordTwit Pro also supports setting accounts as shared or private— perfect for multi-author websites to control the publishing options available for each contributor, author or editor.

And you can even authorize other authors to add their own Twitter accounts securely.

Tweet Scheduling

Scheduling Galore

As with the free version, WordTwit Pro can immediately publish a tweet about your new post to Twitter. Now with WordTwit Pro we’ve added easy to use scheduling, which allows for multiple tweets to be published to Twitter separated by the time you specify, on a per-post basis.

For example, you can now:

• Delay the first tweet from publishing right away for a certain amount of time
• Specify that a tweet be published multiple times, at the interval you choose
• And do both!

Custom #Hashtags

Hashtag Support

We’ve also added another often-requested feature, but went over-the-top in our implementation: totally custom hashtag support.

Instead of just accessing WordPress’ categories or tags to use as hashtags, we’ve built our own hash-tagging system which allows you to quickly and easily add hashtags to your tweets.

It also smart— the new publishing widget provides you with a list of your popular/recently used hashtags and in a few clicks you can add the ones you want to a tweet.

So whether you’re adding a hashtag that’s totally new or those you use often— it’s a breeze to add hashtags to your WordTwit Pro tweets.

Click To Edit

We’ve also added a new Manual Mode for the publishing widget. Simply click to edit-in-place your tweet’s text, title, tags and link. It’s 100% control over the tweets you’ll send out if you need it.

Per Post/Page

It’s also one click easy to decide whether a new post you’re publishing will have a Twitter update published with it. No more excluding by category— just simply flip the widget off with its publish toggle… that’s it.

Tweet Log

Tweet Log

With the new Tweet Log you can see past tweets, upcoming tweets, and any errors that occurred, and what the error message was from Twitter.

Manage, control and delete right from the Tweet Log— you now have more control after you click the ‘Publish’ button.

Admin Panel

Awesome Admin Panel

 
To top it all off, WordTwit Pro features the same intuitive, easy-to-use admin panel that we designed for our WPtouch Pro and Piggy plugins.

With its BraveNewCode admin panel, you can change settings, control your WordTwit Pro setup effortlessly, and do it all in style.

Licenses & Pricing

Licenses for WordTwit Pro include timely, professional customer support in our Support Forums, free upgrades through all 3.x releases, and automatic-upgrades in the admin panel, just like you enjoy with WordPress’ regular plugins.

License types:

$39 — Single license:
Includes support and auto-upgrades for one WordPress website

$79 — 5-Pack license:
Includes support and auto-upgrades for up to 5 WordPress websites

$139 — Unlimited/MU license:
Includes support and auto-upgrades on an unlimited number of WordPress websites, including WordPress MU/Multisite implementations

Available June 10th, 2011

WordTwit Pro will be available for purchase on Friday, June 10th, 2011. Click here to view the product page with even more detail about its features and capabilities.

One More Thing… Private Beta!

There is also a private beta available to all WPtouch Pro and Piggy customers, available today in the pro support forums. You’ll need to be logged in with your WPtouch Pro and/or Piggy account to view the post and access the download for the beta.