I just finished testing a new WordPress plugin that lets you live blog to your WordPress blog using Twitter. I discovered via Twitter today and it is actually very impressive.
You can see the actual blog entry that I did for my test right here – Live Blogging Test. I have left it unedited although with real live blogging I would go in and make all the links clickable.
It was written by Mashuqur Rahman and you can see all the details at his plugin webpage and the WordPress Plugin Directory.
The info provided with the plugin is straight forward however I did confuse one element and that was whether or not the //NLB// entry had to be made with every tweet or just the first one. Turns out it was just the first one.
After installing the plugin and providing your Twitter username, password and a few other configuration details you are off to the races.
The first tweet you send to start your live blogging should look like this:
//NLB// Blog Title
Make that title whatever you want it to be and be sure to put a space between the final slashes and your title – otherwise your entry comes up with a blank title. Keep in mind good descriptive words to help out the search engines. Yes, NLB stands for New Live Blog.
After that entry is sent any subsequent tweets will be included in the live blogging post entry. I set the plugin to check my Twitter stream every two minutes for entries. I did not test if DM’s would show up but I would have to assume they would not – otherwise there is not much personal tweeting in the public timeline while your doing a live blogging event with this plugin.
Once you have completed live blogging your event you need to send the command to close the blog entry:
//ELB//
ELB of course stands for End Live Blog.
I did notice that if any tweets had links in them they were not clickable links in the live blog post so you will need to go back in and edit those afterwards.
Maybe that is a feature the author can add to it later – I guess we will have to see. It is however a very clever plugin and I think it will come in handy for me anyway – hopefully for you as well.
