On June 11th Twitter are permanently switching off off their old API leaving only the new one.

But nobody seems to be talking about it. (Except me. I can’t stop going on about it).

I suppose in the six months we’ve known about this, everybody who knew about the deadline has done something about it.

Putting these enlightened folk aside, it seems that a lot of site owners are blissfully unaware that (a) this is happening, and (b) that it affects them.

So, are you affected? Here’s how to decide ..

1. Do you have a site that displays tweets or does anything with Twitter data at all?

no: You’re fine then. In fact, why are you here?

yes: Keep reading …

 

2. Are you using official embedded tweets, or Twitter button widgets?

yes: These are safe, but double check it’s not one of the older “goodies” widgets – they’re dying with the old API.

no: If the app or widget was developed by you or a third party, keep reading …

 

3. Was the app developed (or last updated) over six months ago?

yes: Red light. It is almost certainly based on the old API and is about to stop working

no: Ok, good. The newer it is the higher the chance you’re ok, but keep going …

 

4.  Has your app ever asked you to ‘connect to Twitter‘ or otherwise authenticate, even if someone else did it ages ago?

yes: Amber light. keep reading.

no:  Red light. Authentication is mandatory with the new API. If your app is not connected to a Twitter account it will die soon.

 

5. Does your app run purely on JavaScript, with no back end scripting like PHP?

yes: Red-ish amber light. Chance are very high that a Javascript-only widget is not doing authentication and will die.

no: Ok, but you’re not out of the woods. Keep going ..

 

6. Does the code reference Twitter URLs that contain the number “1.1“? (e.g. https://api.twitter.com/1.1/…)

yes: Green light. if you can see explicit code references to version 1.1. your app is based on the new API.

no: Any reference to version 1 (e.g. https://api.twitter.com/1/..) is a red light. If it’s not obvious or you can’t read the code, ask a developer.

 

If you’ve got as far as this without a green light, get your app / site / widget checked out ASAP. You’ll find out on Tuesday whether it’s up to date, because Twitter will start to do “blackout tests”. This means your app will break intermitently and then seem to fix itself. It hasn’t. Consider that your final warning and get it fixed.

 

If you need any help with your site or app, please email me: tim @ this domain or contact me via @timwhitlock on Twitter or LinkedIn.

 

Some code resources I’ve been working on:

A Latest Tweets widget for WordPress.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/latest-tweets-widget/

A Twitter library specifically for developing WordPress plugins.
https://github.com/timwhitlock/wp-twitter-api 

A general purpose PHP Twitter client.
https://github.com/timwhitlock/php-twitter-api

A Twitter API library for Node JS
https://github.com/timwhitlock/node-twitter-api

 

Photo credit: modified from g4ll4is