How to Embed Twitter on a Website

Embedding Twitter in your website will let people know what you are up to in real time.

Twitter is a social microblogging application that lets people share what they are doing and thinking about in real time. If you use Twitter and want to embed your Twitter feed into your website, Twitter has widgets that can do this. The advantage of having a live Twitter feed embedded on your website is the incorporation of a live, real-time component into the content on your site. While you may not update your website every day, something new will always be present on the Twitter stream of your static website.

Instructions

1. Visit twitter.com/goodies/widgets to view the available widgets. You can choose to display only your tweets, the tweets of your favorite Twitter profiles, your favorite tweets or a stream of topical tweets about a subject of your choosing. The widget you choose should support your website's strategy.

2. Decide what type of feed you want to display on your website. Click on the name of that widget and you will be taken to the 'customize' page. Enter your username in the "username" box, the search query or the list of tweets you want displayed, and the title and caption for your feed box, if applicable.

3. Click on the "Preferences" button in the lefthand column to continue customizing your feed box. You can choose to add a poll, scrollbar, the number of tweets to show at once and whether to display the avatars, timestamps and hash tags of the tweets.

4. Click on the "Appearance" button in the left-hand column to change the colors of your widget. You should choose colors that complement those used on your website or in your branding.

5. Click on the "Dimensions" button to adjust the size of your feed box. If you are not sure how large to make it, choose "auto width." When you have finished, click the "Test settings" box to see how your feed will look on your website.

6. Adjust your widget if you are not happy with any aspect of it by going back into each customization component. When you are ready, click the "Finish & Grab Code" button. The HTML code will appear in a box.

7. Copy the code onto your clipboard and then paste it into an HTML webpage where you want it to appear on your site. If you have a Blogger blog, you can click the "Add to Blogger" button instead. You will need to log into your Blogger account.

References

• Twitter: Widgets