General FAQ’s

1. Tweet, Tweeted and ReTweet
2. Changing the ‘RT @tweetmeme’ on the button
3. Why do I see a question mark on the button instead of the tweet count
4. Why do I see a spanner on the button instead of the tweet count
5. After I click the ReTweet button, the tweet count doesn’t increase
6. Can I change the style of the button
7. Why is TweetMeme not picking up the correct page title?
8. How do I stop the TweetMeme button accessing my account via OAuth?
9. My button count has reset itself after I changed my URL

Self Hosted Wordpress FAQ’s

1. How do I add the TweetMeme to my Self Hosted Wordpress Site?
2. I get a ? error 301/302 redirect on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?
3. I get a ? error 404 page not found on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?
4. My button doesn’t show the right title, how do I change this?
5. There is something else where my button should be, what should I do?
6. I get a ? error timeout on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?
7. My Button has moved position, why?

Blogger FAQ’s

1. How do I get the TweetMeme button into my Blogger Template?
2. How do I get the TweetMeme button in my sidebar?

General FAQ’s

Tweet, Tweeted and ReTweet

The TweetMeme button shows three different words within the green section under different circumstances.

• Tweet: When you initially set up the TweetMeme button on a site that has never had the content tweeted it will say Tweet.  This is because it cannot be classed as being retweeted unless it’s been tweeted at least once.
• Tweeted: If you are logged into Twitter via OAuth and have already Tweeted that content, either through the button or by copying and pasting the URL into the site or through retweeting someone else it will say Tweeted and the ability to ReTweet content will be disabled. You can only tweet content once from an individual Twitter account.
• ReTweet: Re-Tweet will show if the article has been Tweeted at least once. Also when you are logged into Twitter and have never Tweeted the content before and the count is 1 or more then Re-Tweet will show.  If you are not logged into Twitter but have Tweeted the content before you may still see the word ReTweet until you are logged into OAuth.

Changing the ‘RT @tweetmeme’ on the button

We have now made it possible to change the ‘RT @tweetmeme’ on the button. You can change this by specifying the tweetmeme_source parameter in the JavaScript. For more information please take a look at http://help.tweetmeme.com/2009/04/06/tweetmeme-button/.

Why do I see a question mark on the button instead of the tweet count?

This is caused whenever an error has occurred when looking up the tweet count for that URL. This may be because the URL has been blacklisted, our crawler is receiving a redirect, or we are unable to contact your site. This could be caused by our crawler timing-out when trying to retrieve the page (we have a very short time-out to ensure the button remains responsive). Ensure that your page loads successfully and quickly, and locate all the pages on your site where it works/doesn’t work before posting the details of your issue onto our forum.

Why do I see a spanner on the button instead of the tweet count?

To keep TweetMeme fast and full of features we sometimes have to take the site down for maintenance. The last majority of buttons continue to be served normally (but will not update), but any new URLs or buttons that haven’t been used in a while will display this ‘Upgrading’ button. We always try to minimise downtime, and keep our users up to date on changes on TweetMeme on our status blog.

After I click the ReTweet button, the tweet count doesn’t increase

It can sometimes take time for a tweet to filter through Twitter to TweetMeme, although we do try to reduce this delay as much as possible.

Can I change the style of the button

No, the button is hosted on our web servers and is delivered to your through an iFrame. Styling the button is impossible through this method.

Why is TweetMeme not picking up the correct page title?

TweetMeme caches page information (including the title) to reduce load on the site that is using the button. If you have updated your page titles, you can force TweetMeme to update by using our ping service.

How do I stop the TweetMeme button accessing my account via OAuth?

The TweetMeme button is set to access your Twitter account by Twitter OAuth by default, however should you wish to change this and be forwarded to Twitter directly and log in each time then you can do this. You have two options, the first is to log into TweetMeme and then click on your username at the top right corner of the page. This will take you to the profile page where you can set your preferences. If you wish to go beyond this and revoke OAuth access to our system then you can do this by going to your Twitter account on Twitter and in Settings, Connections you’ll find a list of services with access to your Twitter account. There you will find an application called TweetMeme and the option to revoke access. This will mean that you won’t be able to log into our site without re-authorising your account and you will get the option the first time you click on one of our buttons to log in via OAuth, if you say no to this you will then be able
to just be forwarded to Twitter to retweet your content directly.

My button count has reset itself after I changed my URL

TweetMeme stores the TweetCount against the URL if you change your URL then you in essence start a new TweetCount against that new URL. Your old count will still exist under the old url. At this point in time we do not provide the ability to transfer the old count to a new domain.

Self Hosted Wordpress FAQ’s

How do I add the TweetMeme to my Self Hosted Wordpress Site?

We have a number of different options that provide you with the ability to include the TweetMeme button within your own site. The key options are as follows

• Our TweetMeme plugin – This provides everythign in an easy to install package, details for where to find this and install it can be found here!
• Our JavaScript Code – This is usually used by those who design templates of their own and can be integrated into the template itself.  Please be aware that you should be experienced in website design before choosing this option.  The details for this can be found here.
• The third and final option which is usually used for very large sites that are looking for fast load times and optimization is our Image button.  This is not fo the faint hearted and does mean that you need to understand the limitations and benefits of the Image button. Details for this can be found here.

I get a ? error 301/302 redirect on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?

Redirects are usually set up either on your server or through some Wordpress plugins, and many users are not necessarily aware that they even have them. On occasion these can be misconfigured. The most common cause of this error is due to either SEO plugins being misconfigured or redirects referencing themselves i.e. http://myurl.com -> http://myurl.com/blog -> http://myurl.com which means that we never find an end point url. This can also occur when misconfiguring canonical links so this would be the first place to check.

If you have SEO tools turned on I would suggest turning those off first and also any caching plugins and then reloading the page. (ctrl + f5) If this doesn’t work then start looking at your htaccess file which is hosted on your server to see if there are any redirects set up there. There are also a number of tools out there that help you identify what your site is returning including Firefox Web Developer Tools and the Redirection Wordpress plugin.

I get a ? error 404 page not found on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?

Similarly to the 301/302 redirection error issue, the 404 error means that the page that we are trying to get to cannot be found. Soft 404s (return 200 OK and still load the page but result in 404) can occur as a result of configuration errors when using certain http server software, for example with the Apache software, when an Error Document 404 (specified in a .htaccess file) is specified as an absolute path (e.g. http://example.com/error.html) rather than a relative path (/error.html). You can find more information online about identification and fixing of 404 errors by doing a search online.

My button doesn’t show the right title, how do I change this?

TweetMeme takes the page and post title from the tag text from your site. If this is unreachable then it can return blanks instead. To change the title you need to change the title tag text within your site. Also please ensure that you aren’t caching an old title through cached files. (i.e. WP Super Cache)

There is something else where my button should be, what should I do?

Sometimes header or ad text can show within the IFrame where the TweetMeme button is rendered. This usually means that there is a conflict with another plugin that you have installed on your site. To test this disable all plugins other than the TweetMeme one. See if the button now renders (ensure you have cleared any caches you have set up as well!). If this then renders your culprit lies within one of the other installed plugins, add them back one at a time until your find the one that turns on the problem and report the plugin that conflicts on our help forum or contact the plugin provider directly.

Some Wordpress Themes do not currently support our button but most do. If the issue still arises after all plugins other than the TweetMeme plugin is enabled then your theme is not compatible with our plugin.

I get a ? error timeout on a button or all buttons, how can I fix this?

The TweetMeme button has a timeout of 5 seconds from the start of a page load within which it will attemt to reach the TweetMeme server to retrieve your retweet count. If for any reason it is unable to load within this time it will show the Time Out error. This does not mean that the TweetMeme server is unavailable, it means that your page or site load time is longer than 5 seconds and as such the button is not able to retrieve the count, if you get your load time under 5 seconds the button will be able to retrieve it. Please look into performance identification tools and performance optimization tools to find out what is causing your slow load time.

My Button has moved position why?

If you have a lot of plugins which all use the same Wordpress tag (the_content), the order of which one appears first may of changed with the 1.8 update of the plugin. The TweetMeme plugin now uses a priority of  8, priorities are 1 to 10 (default) 1 being the highest. This means that every plugin which doesn’t set a priority would be loaded after the plugin. We have no plans to change this back since it was a highly demanded fix.

To change the priority back you can edit line 444 of tweetmeme.php and change the 8 to another number (probably 10).

add_filter('the_content', 'tm_update', 10);

Blogger FAQ’s

How do I get the TweetMeme button into my Blogger Template?

There are a number of options to add the TweetMeme button to your Blogger Template. You can either add it manually or you can use or automated template editor.

How do I get the TweetMeme button in my sidebar?

We have developed a simple sidebar widget that you can insert into blogger. You will find the details on how to do this on our blogger template page.