How to Tweet pic’s & host them on your own site…

Mar 27, 2011

I say it all the time… I like to share my passion for storm chasing.   Well there is a fine line between sharing and commercial gain from my work.   The current state of “Viewer submitted Video & Pictures” is killing the ability for some of my fellow chasers to sell their video and pictures.

A word of advice to chasers with stars in their eyes of fame and fortune in storm chasing… I can count on 1 hand the number of chasers who have made a living from storm chasing alone.    Don’t chase because you think your gonna get rich or even make money at all…. you have to do it because it’s something you love.

On Tuesday I tweeted a photo of the Creston, IA Tornado using TwitPic… in turn The Weather Channel immediately took it to air.  Now some may say “They gave you credit” but that’s not the point.  I don’t care about fame… I don’t really care about the money.   My problem is my fellow chasers who were on the same storm who had video to sell that night.

I don’t think I know a single chaser who is not willing to share their video and pictures with you, just so long as your not going to make money off it instead of them.  Chasing is expensive and if there is a dime to be made off of my work…. it’s my dime to be made.

My mistake was uploading the photo to Twitpic who’s terms of service are very clear…. 

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under these Terms of Service. The above licenses granted by you in media Content you submit to the Service terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your media from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that Twitpic may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of your media that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in user comments you submit are perpetual and irrevocable.

So Twitpic does not own my photo…. but they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
Since I am not about to stop sharing my passion I have come up with a technical solution.

With this solution when I tweet a photo my followers will come to MY site not someone elses to see my photo!
Here is an example of what a uploaded pic will look like

When we are done you will have a way to Tweet, post the pic to your own website, watermark it and have a short URL all in 1 step.

This ”How To” is going to assume you are using the following…

• WordPress 3.1 or higher
• Apple iPhone, Ipod, ipad with Twitter for iPhone
• You have a basic understanding of working with plugins in WordPress.

Drupal and Android fans don’t fear…. look for the Drippic module for Drupal and Android fans looks for a Twitter app that supports the twitpic endpoint extend-able script.

So lets get started!
Under Plugins you will want to download “Tweet Images” by Simon Wheatley  Visit plugin site he has made a great plugin and will provide the interface to get the pictures from your client software on your phone (or computer) to your site….  once downloaded go ahead and activate the plugin.

Now I don’t really want my tweets to with pictures to automatically post on my front page so I am going to make a category just for my twitter pics. As you can see in the photo mine are simply called “twitter pics”…. now this is a little frustrating because I can’t get a proper screen shot since Windows wont let you use the mouse and screen shot at the same time.

What you are going to need to do is hover over the category name you choose…. look in the bottom of the browser window and you will see something at looks like “tag_ID=51″ this is your category number and is very important.

Now comes the hardest part of this whole process… we need to modify our front page NOT to display the catagory our twitter posts are in… if you want to skip this step you can just remember whenever you tweet a pic… it will be on your front page.

Under Appearance and editor we are going to need to edit our “Main Index Template” or index.php…. if this is not editable using the tool you will need to download/edit with your FTP client.

These are the modifications you will need to make, this is somewhat complicated however just take your time and read it…. it will make sense.
This excerpt is from the WordPress website found on this page

Click on Settings then Tweet Images…. Here you will want to select the category you want your photos to post to… obviously we created this in a previous step

Click on Save and now click on your username in the top right, this will take you to your user profile.
MAKE SURE TO CLICK THAT ALLOW UPDATES BUTTON!!!
I forgot and spent 2 hours trying to troubleshoot what I did wrong.

You need to copy that entire URL and email it to yourself….. trust me MUCH easier than trying to type it in.

Ok now we have the website work done…. lets get it on the phone!

Now open the email and hold down on the link…. it will ask if you want to copy it….

Now open Twitter for iPhone (Official Client)
Click the 3 … in the lower right
Click accounts and settings
Click the settings button in the lower left
Click Advanced
Click Image Service
Click Custom
Now paste the URL in there (Hold down again till you get a paste button)

And SAVE!

You can now post pictures from your Twitter client they will go to your own website with a link!  Pretty neat huh?

But how about the watermarks?
There is a small caveat with that…  The plugin will watermark EVERY photo you post from here out (That is stored on your site).  Personally I typically link my photos from Facebook or Picassa anyway so it does not watermark them.

Here is how you do the watermarks.
Install a plugin called Wattermark RELOADED By Sandi Verdev  Visit plugin site who knows you might want them all watermarked automatically!

This plugin is rather straight forward and should be easy enough to figure out.

Now extra credit…   How do I protect from a right click on my blog photos?
The plugin is called WP-Copy Protect  By Chetan Gole  Visit plugin site

Don’t forget to put a mean warning somewhere reminding whoever is being the meanie and stealing your stuff you don’t like that!  I typically put mine in the footer.php file like you can find at the bottom of this page.

Well there you go!
As always any questions feel free to shoot me a email at scott@endlessweather.com or leave them in the comments.