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tweeter.php - Automated Twitter updater v1.0

ABOUT
PHP script that uses the Twitter API and cron to automatically post updates to Twitter.

REQUIREMENTS (all free)
1. A Twitter account that will post your updates.
		The script connects to a Twitter application that is tied to this account.
2. A server running PHP (ideally PHP5).
3. A server running cron (this can be the same server as the PHP server).
		Unix-based servers have cron installed by default. Windows servers may have 
		scheduling software as well.
4. A Twitter application.
		To create your application:
			1. Go to http://dev.twitter.com/
			2. Click the "Register an app" button.
			3. Fill out the form to create the application.
					-Application type: Browser
					-Callback URL: [your homepage]
					-Default access type: Read & Write
			4. Accept the terms of use.
			5. On the success page, you will see your Consumer Key and Consumer Secret 
    			   (they look something like iEc56VpybsniRHNhLLKLQ and 
			   Ih2Pgf23pt7m60S74mF8In02HFrOe6wevBbbriZDPNA). Make a note of them.
			6. Click the My Access Token link.
			7. Note your Access Token (oauth_token) and Access Token Secret (oauth_token_secret). 
			   They look something like 14195522-haP1VVWjw9hVQ1zw9zQcu62xfOk2Jtiybn6TeObDN 
			   and 2oWI7YqYB2Fa660N1zzWwZlVxRm0idlOym2qW6us.
5. The OAuth.php and twitteroauth.php libraries.
		These are included in this zip. Updated versions are available at the project's source repository: 
		https://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth/tree/master/twitteroauth

INSTALLATION
1. Write your tweets and save them, one tweet per line, in a text file (twitterposts.txt).
		The tweet_counter.xls spreadsheet includes a character-counting function that ensures
		your tweets do not exceed the 140-character maximum.
2. Upload the tweet file to your webspace.
3. Add your Twitter app information to tweeter.php
		i. Open the tweeter.php file in a text editor.
		ii. Insert your Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token, and Access Token Secret 
		    in the spaces in lines 4-7:
			$consumer_key = "from http://dev.twitter.com/";
			$consumer_secret = "from http://dev.twitter.com/";
			$access_key = "from http://dev.twitter.com/";
			$access_secret = "from http://dev.twitter.com/";
		iii. Insert the path to your .txt file in line 8: 
			[$lines = file ("path/to/.txt/file/containing/posts");]
			You can use either a relative link or a full link (including http://)
		iv. If necessary, change the timezone in line 11 to your local timezone.
			(In most cases, you will not need to change this. A full list of PHP 
			timezone names are available at: 
			http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php)
		v. Save and close the file.
4. Upload tweeter.php, OAuth.php, and twitteroauth.php to your webspace.
5. Navigate to tweeter.php and check for errors.
		The script runs when the page is accessed.) Open your Twitter page to ensure 
		that the tweet went through.
6. If the script is working, create a cron job that uses cURL, wget (or another command-line 
   web-access tool) to connect to tweeter.php on a regular schedule.
		A typical cron entry would look like this:
			0 * * * * wget -O /dev/null http://www.yourdomain.com/tweeter.php
		This will run tweeter.php every hour.
		

NOTES
1. tweeter.php logs posting errors in a file located in its directory. If your tweets are not appearing, check tweeterErrors.log.
2. Twitter limits the number of requests programs can make to the API. To avoid problems, do not set tweeter.php to run more frequently than every half hour. 
	(*/30 * * * *  wget -O /dev/null http://www.yourdomain.com/tweeter.php)
3. The Twitter API automatically blocks the same tweet from being posted more than once in a row. This is most likely the reason for an hourly update not to occur. You can reduce the number of missed updates by writing more tweets in the twitterposts.txt file.