The advantage of been able to display your subscibers count in plain text is that you can customize it endlessly! You can even use jQuery to add the hover over ’show count’ effect you often see on RSS icons. Needless to say, this way is much better then the Feedburner chicklets.

Right, first thing you need to do is use a bit of code to pull the count, and second you need to display it on your site. This first bit of code needs to be somewere near the top of your page, like your header…

<?php
$temp="https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=FEEDBURNERID";
 
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $temp);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
 
$feedcount = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];
?>

Don’t forget to change where it says FEEDBURNERID to the Feedburner ID relivant to your account. Now that you have the feed count in the variable $feedcount you are free to display it on your site, for example…

There are currently <?php echo $feedcount; ?> subscribers.

The script requires PHP5, so if you are encountering any errors, then it is likely your are running an older version of PHP, otherwise, you may have used an incorrect Feedburner ID. Also please note that this script is for Google Feedburner accounts. Google acquired Feedburner a while back so if you haven’t converted your Feedburner account into a Google one then you will need to do so before you use this script.

I often find myself making web updates for clients and having to copy large amounts of text from a Word document, and I usually find myself uploading the copy to find I have actually missed a cheeky ampersands or pound sign somewhere on the page and not converted into the proper code format (eg. & or £). This is where postable comes in handy, as all you do is copy your text into the box provided on the website and hit the ‘make it friendly’ button. Postable will look for these things and convert the for you, saving a lot of time!

Check out the site at…

http://www.elliotswan.com/postable/

http://www.1kbgrid.com/

http://www.w3avenue.com/2009/05/04/list-of-really-useful-tools-for-css-developers/

Anyway, less of the chatter Stu! Here’s the code….

<?php
$username = "TwitterUsername"; // Your twitter username.
$prefix = ""; // Prefix - some text you want displayed before your latest tweet.
$suffix = ""; // Suffix - some text you want display after your latest tweet.
$feed = "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:" . $username . "&rpp=1";
 
function parse_feed($feed) {
$stepOne = explode("<content type=\"html\">", $feed);
$stepTwo = explode("</content>", $stepOne[1]);
$tweet = $stepTwo[0];
$tweet = str_replace("&lt;", "<", $tweet);
$tweet = str_replace("&gt;", ">", $tweet);
return $tweet;
}
 
$twitterFeed = file_get_contents($feed);
echo stripslashes($prefix) . parse_feed($twitterFeed) . stripslashes($suffix);
?>

Make sure you change the ‘TwitterUsername‘ to your own Twitter Username. If you want to keep your code clean, then you can move this script into your header tags, but you will need to change this line:

echo stripslashes($prefix) . parse_feed($twitterFeed) . stripslashes($suffix);

to this:

$tweet = stripslashes($prefix) . parse_feed($twitterFeed) . stripslashes($suffix);

Then you can just call this variable later on in your code where you want your Tweet to be displayed. Finally, I just want to mention that if you come across the following error:

Warning: file_get_contents(): URL file-access is disabled

You will need to do one of the following:

• Edit your PHP.ini file (usually located in /etc/php.ini) and make sure this line is in it:
  allow_url_fopen = On
• Create a file called “.htaccess” in your website root directory with the following line:
  php_value allow_url_fopen on

This should sort out the problem, but if you need any more help then leave a comment and I will gladly help! If the whole process went smoothly, then you should be appreciating your Latest Tweet on your website just like me!

I have often found myself wondering if the celebs I am following are in fact actually them or just some crazed obsessed fan wanting 15 minutes of fame pretending to be there idol, and until now I have had no way of confirming my suspicitions.

The ‘Verified Account’ feature will add a badge to your Twitter page showing you are in fact who you say you are, and I guess give all the followers of that person peice of mind. I think this is a really good step from Twitter and very well timed, as the sites popularity is still rocketing, this will help cut out the crap so to speak!

To become ‘Verified’ you need to fill out a feedback form from the link below, but for now I think they are only dealing with users who have had re-occuring problems with people trying to impersonate them, or celebrity characters.

http://twitter.com/help/verified

Whats great about it is that on various episodes, you can view video clips showing you the most key things from that particular episode! Heres the link:

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=timeline

From the settings page, you add a new ‘Widget’ which then gives you the option of which account you want to setup, for example, Google Analytics. From here you enter your account details and save, at which point you will get a nice colourful box on the main app screen which will show your accont details.

For me this is great, I have Ego setup to show my Analytics stats for selfconclusion.co.uk as well as my SC feedburner figures and also my main Twitter account.

The default view for the Analytics Widget shows you your page views for that current day, which once tapped, moves onto show you your views for yesterday, then for the week, then for the month, and finally the year. On the left hand side of the box, you also get a unique visitors figure which is handy. I much prefer this app to the Analytics application, because it simplifies things down! When I am on the move I don’t need to see all my Analytic stats, seeing my page views is enough for me.

Moving onto the Feedburner widget, you are shown a figure that is your number of subscribers which is also joined with an arrow to show you if this figure is down or up on yesterdays figure. If you tap this figure then you get the difference in subscribers from that of yesterday (for example, +2).

Finally, for the Twitter widget, it shows you your latest tweet, and also how many followers you currently have. Once again if you tap this number, it changes, in this case to the number of people you are following, if you tap on it once more you see your total number of tweets to date :)

Anyways, I hope I have explained it simple enough! The app is well worth the £1.19 price tag on the App store! check it out by clicking here [App Store Link]