Just Tweet It is “THE directory for Twitter users”, a place where you can submit your Twitter URL and a short bio in one or more of several categories and find new Twitter friends to connect with. Just Tweet It is the creation of Dani McDaniel and Adelle Charles and is built on WordPress. I spoke briefly with Dani to congratulate them on their creative use of WordPress and the success so far of Just Tweet It.
Q & A
Q – What made you choose WordPress for the site?
A – I chose WordPress because I LOVE IT! The dynamic ability of WordPress allows it to easily be used for so many things; you just have to think outside of the typical “blog” box.
Q – Did you develop the theme yourself?
A – The theme is a custom design that I built using my anidandesign.com theme which is also an original theme.
Q – What was your goal in starting this site?
A – My experience was so positive once I began networking with people on Twitter I thought JTI would be a super easy way to find people on twitter with similar interests to help expand my Twitterverse.
Q – How did you promote the site when it was launched
A – Our promotion consisted of tweeting about it and submitting to the usual “promo” sites like digg, stumble upon, design float, delicious, etc. But really once we started telling our circle of twitter friends about JTI, it just sort of took off.
How does it work?
Just Tweet It makes clever use of some in-built features of WordPress along with a few well chosen plugins to add extra functionality. The main components of the front page are the directory itself, subscription options, latest blog posts, a “featured Tweeter”, and the newest directory submissions.
The Directory
The front page lists each category in the directory in three columns.
Although they are considered categories, they are actually WordPress pages. Each page contains a short blurb and a link to the submissions form, followed by the list of submissions themselves which includes people’s Gravatars.
Each submission is a WordPress comment, and the submission form itself is a modified comments form.
The form has been enhanced with the Subscribe to Comments plugin so that you can receive email updates when new Twitter users add themselves to a category you are interested in.
Subscribe by Email
Aside from the Subscribe to Comments plugin the you can also subscribe to RSS feeds for the blog and for updates to all of the directory categories. The feeds are published through Feedburner which allows you to subscribe via email using the form on the front page.
Featured Tweeter
The front page has a “Featured Tweeter” which is achieved by using custom fields to tag certain blog posts as “featured posts”. There are tutorials online such as this one at NETTUTS on how to use custom fields in this and other ways with WordPress, as well as free themes that come pre-made with this functionality.
Newest Tweeters
The latest directory submissions are displayed on the front page by using the Simple Recent Comments plugin for WordPress.
Submit your own Twitter ID!
Head over to Just Tweet It and submit your own Twitter ID, or browse the categories to find interesting new Twitter users to follow. You can submit to as many different categories as you like, however all submissions are moderated so avoid submitting to categories you don’t fit into and don’t write anything spammy in your bio. You can find me in the Bloggers category or just go straight to my Twitter profile to follow me too!
What is the most creative use of WordPress you’ve seen?
Just Tweet It is a great example of the power and flexibility of WordPress when it comes to creating dynamic websites for all kinds of purposes. Have you seen other sites that make such creative use of WordPress? Tell us about them in the comments below.
About Paul Cunningham
Great article! Thank you so much for posting ;)
Very eye opening to read what has been done to make this a directory website using WordPress.
Congrats on the idea and best of luck!
thanks for the informative post, well worth the reading ;)
Interesting adaptation of WordPress. It is a robust and feature rich system, this site proves it’s dimension.
Had not head of Just Tweet It, looks awesome.
Hi,
Great post. I have been searching all over the web to try and find a way to use wp comments as a directory. I am looking to set up a directory of coaches and this would work perfectly.
Can you tell me where I can find themes that have this function built in to it please?
James
Hi James, sorry I do not know of any themes that are designed for directory sites already. However it is fairly easy to adapt any theme to do this.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the reply.
I have been banging my head against the wall trying to edit the comments.php file by following the step by step guide on the NetTuts site, but I just don’t seem able to get it to work. I am at a bit of a loss now!!
James
Thanks for the post. I will have to try this.
Thanks for the tips, very informative.
wow..i never knew you could build a directory website with wordpress…nice to know…will check it oot
Great plug-in thanks a lot!
Making a web directory using wordpress is a lot easier these days. There is a very affordable theme that you can use to make the coolest wordpress sites ever, just using a directory theme, with some tweaks. You can check out how I have used this web directory wordpress theme to make a google map api v3 mashup. I still suffer some page load issues, but I am working to improve on the next version. The site is Latitude Longitude Finder . I have never heard of the twitter site though. I will go and have a look. Creative use of wordpress functions judging by your description. Thanks