Nick Davis

  • How to get the Twitter API Settings for the Genesis Latest Tweets plugin

    If you use the Genesis Latest Tweets plugin to display a list of recent tweets on your website (or your client’s website) you might have noticed it ‘breaking’ recently.

    I won’t get into details (because I don’t have them) but this is due to a change in the way that Twitter’s API is handling requests like these from now on.

    In short, in order to keep the plugin running the way you want it you’ll need to register an ‘app’ with the Twitter API in the developer part of their website.

    Although it’s annoying not just be able to open the plugin and go (not the developers’ fault) this is a free, one time process that you need to do and will probably take you less than two minutes.

    There are basic instructions on how to do this in the app itself but I thought I’d expand on them a little here as I know a lot of people use this plugin and – like me – probably aren’t very familiar with Twitter’s developer area.

    How to get Twitter API settings for Genesis Latest Tweets

    1. First make sure the Genesis Latest Tweets plugin is installed and activated in your WordPress install (you must also be running the Genesis Framework for this widget to work);
    2. Go to Genesis > Latest Tweets from the WordPress left hand menu;
    3. The top section – Twitter API Settings – is the information you need to get from Twitter;
    4. Click the Twitter dashboard link and sign in with your Twitter credentials;
    5. Click the ‘Create a new application’ button;
    6. Enter the Name, Description and the Website address you’re going to use it on, accept the terms and conditions and click the ‘Create your Twitter application’ button;
    7. On the following page, copy and paste your Consumer key to the OAuth Consumer Key field on the Genesis Latest Tweets Settings page;
    8. Do the same for your Consumer secret;
    9. Now go back to the Twitter page, scroll down and click the ‘Create access token’ button;
    10. Scroll up and click the ‘OAuth tool’ tab;
    11. Now you can copy and paste the Access token and Access token secret fields back to your Genesis Latest Tweets Settings page;
    12. Click Save Settings and a new box ‘Twitter API Settings’ should have appeared showing you that everything has been successful.
    13. Now go to Appearances > Widgets in WordPress and drag the Genesis Latest Tweets widget to the widget area you want to use, complete the appropriate fields and hit Save.

    Voila, you now have the updated Genesis Latest Tweets widget running on your site.

    This guide was based on Genesis Latest Tweets version 1.2.2 but should be good for the foreseeable future — Nick