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Bridget Willard

How Can I Manage My The X Platform (Twitter) Account’s Suggestion Feed?

Twitter’s suggested feed might not be what you want to see. So, how can you change it? You can do this in three ways. This topic comes from a question from Quora.

“How can I manage my Twitter account’s suggestion feed?“

Change Twitter’s Default View to Circumvent Twitter’s Suggestion Feed

It is a bit annoying that Twitter doesn’t default to chronological view They have tried to make a good experience with personalization.

If you would like to see the latest tweets, go to the stars at the top of your feed, click on it. Choose “see latest tweets instead.” The GIF below should help. It’s slightly different on mobile.

If you don’t like your home feed, try seeing the latest tweets instead.

Change Your Behavior to Circumvent Twitter’s Suggestion Feed

So Twitter is suggesting things based upon your current behavior. If you would like it to suggest some other things, then you need to tweak your behavior. That’s the simple answer.

For example, if you aren’t seeing enough of what you like, go and look for things that you do like. Interact with those people. Reply to those tweets.

Use Twitter Lists to Circumvent Twitter’s Suggestion Feed

Another thing that you can do is start Twitter lists. When you have a list, you add people to that list. This helps Twitter suggest your account as well as notify others they are on a list.

I have a video on how to use your lists with Hootsuite to help. I have a lot to say about lists in my blog post about Twitter lists as well.

Learn More in “Keys to Being Social”

Try to think of why you’re on Twitter. What is it that you want to accomplish? Twitter is for conversations and relationship building. So, if you’re not using it for that, maybe it’s just your behavior that’s not effective. I said “wrong” in the video but that has a connotation of morality. It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about what is effective.

If you want your social media presence to be more effective, grab my book “Keys to Being Social.” It’s affordable on Amazon. Or feel free to , if that’s what you prefer.

November 20, 2020
WordPress 5.6 and PHP 8 – Changes [Did] Happen
Is your plugin ready for PHP 8? Maybe I should ask if you’re ready for WordPress 5.6? Either way, there will be changes. Breaking ones. Read them all on PHP 8’s GitHub page.

PHP 8 comes out on Thanksgiving and WordPress 5.6 comes out 12 calendar days later. So, yay! Not so much? Also, why are there any software releases after October 15? If you believe in holidays, then believe in holidays. Sheesh.

I’ve reached out to my clients who build plugins and themes and none of them are surprised by either WordPress 5.6 coming or PHP 8. They’re a bit bummed that it means another holiday testing their code, but yeah. Welcome to plugin development in WordPress, right? Nothing new to see here, folks.

When is PHP 8 Coming Out?

General availability or GA of PHP 8 will be on 26 November, according to their calendar. PHP has 4 release candidates and the fourth will be on 12 November.

PHP Release Candidate 2 is available for testing as of 16 October and the third will drop 29 October. (PHP is international so the date is European style.)

When is WordPress 5.6 Coming Out?

The final release is set to come out December 8 according to this post on Make WordPress.

WordPress has a call for testing PHP 8 right now for 5.6. Testing feedback in the form of GitHub or Trac tickets closes November 17.

And, yes, WordPress 5.6 will have support for PHP 8. So you may as well make your plugin ready. Right?

“Even though WordPress 5.6 will add support for PHP 8.0, no changes will be made to the minimum required version of PHP at this time.” Andrei Draganescu (10/6/2020)

How Does PHP Affect My WordPress Website?

If you’re reading this and you’re a website owner but not a product or plugin developer, that’s okay. The bottom line is this: it’s best practices to have your software as up-to-date as possible. If you’re not sure, check with your web host.

WordPress is a content management system that uses PHP to talk between the servers, your website, and the browser. Generally, your website host determines how high you can upgrade your site’s PHP. My site is and I was on PHP 7.2, for example. I just upgraded to PHP 7.4. That was as high as I could go.

Should I Refactor for PHP 8?

Maybe. My suggestion from a strategic standpoint and manpower is to be ready for the future. In marketing and public relations, we like to be ahead of the story. It seems to me you save yourself a lot of work later if you plan for the future now.

“Refactoring WordPress plugins is no joke. But if you start with small functions like this and gradually work your way around the codebase, it gets easier.” Tom McFarlin

Maybe start another dev branch that is PHP 8 ready but wrapped to support down to 7.2 or something. 7.4 might be a better route, but it’s up to you.

We like to honor backward compatibility in WordPress but Gutenberg is already a major breaking change (though I seem to be the only one saying it). But that’s another blog post.

“PHP 8 is actually already at RC2 and will be released nov 26th. Re: WP vs PHP8 – as things stand, expect breakage in unexpected places. Most of WP is untested on PHP 8 and with WPs reliance on type juggling, things *will* break.” Juliette on Twitter

How Should PHP 8 Affect My WordPress Plugin?

PHP 8 and WordPress plugins may be a bit of a challenge. Like I noted earlier, WordPress 5.6 (as of right now) will support PHP 8. Some of my friends, however, worry about some issues that will cause breakage.

Marketing Your Plugin’s Compatibility with PHP 8 and WordPress 5.6

Yes, you should let people know that your plugin is compatible with WordPress 5.6 and/or PHP 8. Start your GitHub repos, begin your documentation, write blog posts, include notes on update schedules on product pages. Tweet. Yeah. You should tell people.

Note that Josepha wrote: “WordPress 5.6 includes seven Gutenberg plugin releases.” SEVEN. So, maybe check those out.

What about Laravel and PHP 8?

Developers like Carl Alexander and Josh Pollock will be upgrading their Laravel products to PHP 8 right away. Why? Well, it’s a pretty complicated issue in WordPress. Laravel is newer.

Yes. There is way less need for backwards compatibility, less history and a smaller, more skilled developer ecosystem.
— Josh Pollock 🌱🌵🌲 (@Josh412) October 23, 2020

What about Microsoft and PHP 8?

When I read this quote on the Microsoft externals channel, I was aghast. It sounded like PHP 8 wouldn’t work on Windows Servers.

“We are not, however, going to be supporting PHP for Windows in any capacity for version 8.0 and beyond.” Dale Hirt, Service Engineer Microsoft

But, thankfully, after writing a comment on The WP Tavern, Andrey set me straight.

“PHP language is still absolutely supported and works on Windows.Microsoft discontinued donation of time and infrastructure to the process of producing Windows binaries of PHP. Just that.” Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko

He’s nice like that. One of my favorite people on the planet!

OMG This is So Long! TL;DR
- PHP 8 releases November 26.
- WordPress 5.6 Releases December 8.
October 23, 2020
WordPress and Facebook oEmbed Support

Many of us who have been blogging for years are completely used to being able to post a link to a Facebook or Instagram post and it magically appearing.

That is from the oEmbed support from Facebook’s API. The old oEmbed endpoints end October 24, 2020. They have new Facebook oEmbed endpoints. The developer requirements, should you want to create your own app, are in that post.

Keep in mind that when we say “Facebook’s API” this also includes Instagram.

Search Engine Journal noted that the changes are retroactive.

“To be specific, an upcoming API update will remove support for unauthenticated Facebook and Instagram embeds. …The change is retroactive, so all Facebook and Instagram embeds on the sites of unauthenticated publishers will soon become broken. This has the potential to affect millions of sites.” Matt Southern

I will admit it was nice to see something about WordPress Core in SEJ!

Facebook and WordPress

As a result, WordPress Core (the base software not plugins and themes) is ending support for Facebook and Instagram oEmbeds as of WordPress 5.5.2.

I support this decision fully. As I wrote on the Trac ticket 50861:

As a writer and social media manager, who loves and depends upon oEmbeds (rather than screenshots), I completely understand the logic behind removal.

I completely agree this should become plugin-dependent.

Facebook is famous for changing the rules on their playground. And, honestly, APIs be like that sometimes. Right?

So, as far as communicating this to the general public, we should fill in the holes of people’s education.

WordPress 5.5.2 has an important update that affects oEmbeds of Facebook properties. This includes Instagram and Facebook links.

How Does This Affect You?

Previously, any WordPress blogger could simply insert a URL of a Facebook or Instagram post and the image and post would render. Like magic, but definitely technical.

Unfortunately, Facebook has made access to their API a bit more complicated which, cheers to them, helps protect the privacy of its user base.

If you’re worried about this update, check your posts for links that don’t unfurl/render. They will appear as regular links. It isn’t broken, it just doesn’t render. Instead, use the link like you would any link — in a sentence — with accessibility in mind.

You can always include a screenshot with alt tags and a caption as well

Jetpack to the Rescue

Well, it’s no surprise that Jetpack by Automattic finds a reason to be relevant again. They will be supporting oEmbeds from Facebook and Instagram as long as your site is connected to Jetpack.

“Facebook and Instagram are ending support for their oEmbed API on October 24. After this change, you must register a Facebook developer account, create an app, and provide a token when calling the new API. …Simply connect your site to Jetpack and start sharing. We’ll handle everything behind the scenes so you don’t have to worry about it.” Jetpack

But I Want My oEmbeds

If you don’t want to use Jetpack, and I get it, there are other plugins you can use. In the same WordPress Trac thread, Syed Balkhi suggests two of his company’s solutions:

“Just wanted to comment here, since our Smash Balloon Instagram and FB feed plugins are already used by over 1.2 million users, we have added the oEmbed functionality to it.
This was easy for us to do because to create custom feeds, users would have to use the API key anyways. Over the years, our plugin has simplified that process to make it very user-friendly.
I think it’d be helpful to recommend these because we DO NOT require users to go through a complicated FB app setup process or anything.
Instagram Feeds – https://wordpress.org/plugins/instagram-feed/
Facebook Feeds – https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-facebook-feed/

How Else Can I Link to Facebook and Instagram Posts?

The good news is that links are links. As long as the post is public, you can still create a link within the context of a paragraph. People can click the link and go to the post. It’s not that big of a deal. If you really want the visual, then take a screenshot. If you do that, make sure to include alt text and a link to the actual post. It’s a little bit of work, but worth it.

October 20, 2020