Twitterfeed and Your Artfire Studio - A Tutorial

Hi everyone! I was planning on waiting a bit to go all "computer nerd" on you again, but it seems that a lot of people are eager to learn to use Twitterfeed, so I thought I'd go ahead and post this now.

In order to use Twitterfeed, you need a basic understanding of RSS Feeds first. If you haven't already done so, it may help to read my post about RSS feeds before you try to tackle Twitterfeed. (Go ahead... I'll wait... :wink:)

OK. You guys ready? (This is so easy it's gonna blow your minds!)



*** I'm going to use my studio again, but you can feel free to use yours so you don't have to do this twice! LOL ***

First, you're going to need a Twitter account. (If you haven't set that up, please go here and do so before you go any further.)
Once you have your Twitter username and password set up, follow these steps:

1. Open one window and go to Twitterfeed. Click the blue link that says "Login to twitterfeed" and you should see this:

Also, you need to open another window and go to your Artfire studio feed. (Just use the directions you learned in my earlier post to get there!) Once you have this window open to your studio feed (and it looks like this:)

go back to the Twitterfeed window.

2. Go to the little box that says "OpenID Login". See that little "Blogger B" to the right of the box? If you click it, a pop up will show up that looks like this:

The easiest thing to do is to use your Blogger ID (assuming you have one). As you can see, mine is already showing in my example. (If you don't have one, you can use your google login, your yahoo login, your LJ login, and so on. Hopefully you will have at least one of the logins listed. Just use whichever you prefer! Be sure you remember which login you use, though, as you will need it to edit your feed or add new feeds later!) Anyway, to use your Blogger ID, just click on the Blogger icon in the popup box. You will see that the box now looks like this:

Just highlight the part that says "username" and change it to your own username, then hit "login".

3. Your page should now look like this:

Click the blue link that says "go to my twitter feeds (or create a new one)". This will take you to a page that looks similar to this (Yours will be different, because I already have 4 feeds set up... don't panic if yours doesn't look exactly like this yet! LOL):


4. Near the bottom of the page, you will see a link to "Create a New Feed". Click that, please. You should now see this:


5. In the "username" box, type your Twitter username, and in the "password" box type your Twitter password. Just to make sure you did it right, click the link that says "test twitter authentication ". If you did, you will see a green check mark. If not, retype it until that green check shows up. (If you can't get it to show up, you may need to go to Twitter and make sure you can login using the info you are typing.)

6. Go to the 2nd window you opened (the one with your studio RSS feed showing) and copy the address from the address bar. Come back to the Twitterfeed window and paste that address into the box that says "RSS Feed URL". Be sure you click "test rss feed" after you paste the address, and make certain you get another green check mark! If you don't get that check, you won't be able to create your feed later!

7. At this point, you can change how often Twitterfeed checks new feeds, but it's already set to check once every hour. This is usually sufficient (unless you're one of those "power listers" out there LOL), so I'd just leave it as it is. Also, you can type up to 20 characters in the box labeled "Prefix each tweet with:" if you'd like. For my Artfire feed, I typed "New on Artfire". You do not have to do this, but if you do, each time Twitterfeed tweets for you, it will place whatever you type at the beginning of the tweet.

8. The last thing you need to do is to click "Create". Once you click "create" it should take you back to this page:

As long as you make it back to that page you are done! You have now created your very first Twitterfeed! Now, all you have to do is wait an hour or two and check your Twitter page. You should see tweets showing from Twitterfeed! (Just FYI, the very first time Twitterfeed checks your newly created feed, it will only show the last thing you added to your studio. After that, it will show up to 5 new listings. This means that if you add more than 5 listings between checks, only the last 5 will be "auto tweeted" for you. Likewise, if you only add one listing, just that one new item will show on Twitter.)

I hope this has been helpful. If something isn't clear, please let me know, and I will do all I can to make it better. Also, if there are any other things you'd like me to try to help with in the future, please leave me a comment and I will do all I can to help!

p.s. You can also use this with your etsy shop! Just follow the steps but substitute your Etsy feed for your Artfire feed! ;0)

p.p.s Please add me to your Twitter friends if I'm not already on your list! I would LOVE to see all of your Twitterfeeds in action!

<3