Honestly the guide isn’t the prettiest eBook I’ve ever seen, but it really is packed with information. You’ll want to read it online as it links to YouTube for video tutorials and other online resources.

TwttrList is deeply integrated with the Twitter API, taking advantage of the search, timeline, status, and favorites interfaces. Because of the timing of our release relative to the release, subsequent unrelease and re-release of OAuth for Twitter, we built almost all of the API requests to support both OAuth and username/password. The code for any Twitter request looks like this (slightly simplified):

/**
 * Return favorite tweets list for user specified by OAuth or user/pass.
 *   doc: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-favorites
 *
 * @param MemberTwitterData object
 * @return list of favorites or null
 */
public static function getUserFavorites($client_twitter_data, $page = 1) {
  $cache_key = internal_hash($client_twitter_data, ...);
  if ($res = ApplicationHelper::memcacheGet($cache_key)) {
    if ($res == 'none') {
      return null;
    } else {
      return $res;
    }
  }
   if (!self::$use_oauth) {
    $curl_options = array(CURLOPT_POST => 0,
                          CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array('Expect:'),
                          CURLOPT_USERPWD => $client_twitter_data->screen_name . ':' . $client_twitter_data->twitter_password);
 
    $results = ApplicationHelper::rest_connect('https://twitter.com/favorites.json', ...,  $curl_options);
    if ($results === false) {
      $results = null;
    }
  } else {
    $oauth = new TwitterOAuth(self::$app_token, self::$app_secret, $client_twitter_data->oauth_token, $client_twitter_data->oauth_secret);
    $results = $oauth->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/favorites.json', array('page' => $page), 'GET');
    if ($oauth->lastStatusCode() != 200) {
      $results = null;
    }
  }
 
  if ($results) {
    $results = json_decode($results);
    ApplicationHelper::memcacheSet($cache_key, $results, ...); 
  } else {
    ApplicationHelper::memcacheSet($cache_key, 'none', ...); 
  }
 
  return $results;
}

The Twitter OAuth library I chose is the one provided by Abraham Williams and despite the warnings in the comments about not using the library in production code, I found the library to be very stable and usable.

With this structure in place, we were able to switch between using OAuth and Twitter usernames/passwords by simply setting a single boolean value in the Twitter helper class. With the boolean use_oauth set to false, the authentication popup screen we developed displays a username/password form. When true, the popup screen goes through the actual OAuth process. Switching mid-stream is possible as well because each time authentication is required we can simply re-request the new user credentials.

TwttrList obviously uses a lot of request caching. We cache everything we possibly can using timeouts for each type of data based on our best judgment. Search requests are cached for a shorter time than user favorites, for example.

The final large coding piece was to develop a reusable Javascript class to provide consistent display and AJAX functionality on all the pages that are involved in the TwttrList lens display. This class is mostly agnostic to any framework (jQuery, Prototype) because Squidoo is transitioning between frameworks at the moment. The JS for TwttrList is lightweight and very reusable.

The real magic of TwttrList is in its usability, concept and design which is a group effort by the whole Squidoo team. It takes a village to create a great software application and I’m part of one of the best villages around. The creative elements of the design and the constant attention to usability details throughout the application make TwttrList something more than just the nuts and bolts of the code.

Take a look at TwttrList today and let me know what you think. I’d love to answer questions about the implementation (within reason), so ask away!

Stretch yourself just a little bit by doing something differently. Maybe today you start by downloading a new browser, or by learning how to use an RSS Reader. If you spend too much time worrying about how to do something, you may never do it at all. There’s no absolute right way to write a blog or design a web site — dive in and see for yourself.

The first step is often the hardest, but you’ll never get to your destination if you don’t take it. There’s a lot of room on the internet for your ideas. Heaven knows that there are already enough blogs about blogging and web sites about how to make new web sites. I want to read your blog about investing, buying insurance, retirement planning, gardening, or whatever you’re best at. If you’re still unsure about getting started, drop me a line and I help you get pointed in the right direction. Or read a little from Seth, Brian, Darren, Rob, Spencer, or Joel and learn more about how they do what they do.

Oh, yeah. There is. It’s called Delicious and I use it. I’ve been keeping all of my tastiest bookmarks on delicious.com for years — and so have millions of other people. Using Delicious, I can access my saved web sites from any browser on any computer anywhere. I don’t bother with the bookmarks feature of my browser because I use two browsers on this computer, four on my laptop and I also access the web from my phone, my wife’s computer and when I’m on the road. It’s so much easier to just go to my personal bookmarks list at delicious.com/RealNerd and browse/search there.

While you’re working on making yourself more accessible, make sure you do the same thing for your web site. Make bookmarking your site a single click option. Just put a little link with a graphic on your site and give me one-click access to save your site for later. If you’re not really the figure-it-out-and-write-the-code person, don’t worry, Delicious has even done the work for you.

Do it yourself — no assembly required

All you need to do is grab the HTML code from the first box on the Save Buttons page on Delicious. I’ve copied the same code below so you can see what I’m talking about.

<img src="http://static.delicious.com/img/delicious.small.gif" 
  height="10" width="10" alt="Delicious" />
<a href="http://delicious.com/save" 
  onclick="window.open(
  'http://delicious.com/save?v=5&ampnoui&ampjump=close&ampurl=' + 
  encodeURIComponent(location.href) + '&amptitle=' + 
  encodeURIComponent(document.title),
  'delicious', 'toolbar=no, width=550, height=550') 
  return false"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>

All you need to do is put that little bit of HTML code on each page of your site and you’ll have a nice little link that looks and works just like this:

Bookmark this on Delicious

If you’re not directly responsible for updating your site, pass this along to the person who is. It only takes a few minutes for you and it will really make my life easier (not to mention the other few million Delicious users). Thanks!