Okay, I’m surprised that more people who run blogs don’t know this.
I saw a blogger recently write a post recently that featured screenshots of tweets. As such they loaded up the tweets, took screenshots, saved them, uploaded them, and embedded the screenshot into the post. Usually after the screenshot there is direct link to the tweet itself.
Zzzzzz. It takes too long.
WordPress is compatible with oEmbed, a list of services that allows you to embed onto a site a representation of the URL within posts and pages.
What does this mean? Well if you include a Twitter URL on the page, rather than link it, it will grab the URL, and format it in a way so it looks similar to twitter. Say for example, this URL (https://twitter.com/rhyswynne/status/291573833675206656) parses via oEmbed like this.
WP Email Capture 2.7.4 Released! http://t.co/byVmPNVH via @WPEmailCapture
— Rhys Wynne 🏴🇪🇺 (@rhyswynne) January 16, 2013
All you need to do is when writing a post in WordPress simply include the URL of the tweet you want to parse on its own line.
Final score in the Antartic @ColwynBayFC 6-3 @rhylfc. Only one winner tonight. Jack Frost. I'm off for a brew.
— Colwyn Bay FC 🏴 (@ColwynBayFC) January 16, 2013
It’s not just Twitter. WordPress is compatible with Youtube, Flickr, and a variety of other services. You can see a full list here. You can even add your own, but that’s a post for another day.
This post may not be news to many of you, but hopefully this is useful to some. I’m just surprised people are including screenshots of tweets in their posts still.
Update: Another possible bonus of oEmbed is that, according to a recent court case, if you embed tweets with images, then you are properly crediting photographers (thanks to Danny Denhard – @dannydenhard for finding this. So this photo below, even if it was under copyright, could be legal.
Lego! pic.twitter.com/pTwE2FN1
— Rhys Wynne 🏴🇪🇺 (@rhyswynne) January 18, 2013
I should also mention that oEmbed only works with tweets that upload pictures to pics.twitter.com.
I will say I am not a lawyer! But not only is oEmbed the best way to embed content, it may also be the most legal.
@rhyswynne good tip. Didn’t actually know about that…
@rhyswynne Good article, but the link to the list of oEmbeds doesn’t seem to work.