No, Not this kind of Twitter Card!
Sometimes I just decide I want things. So, this time I wanted to see my twitter analytics because I don’t trust all those nifty ‘find your’ themed apps on Twitter. Apparently, that requires something called Twitter Card implementation on your website. ‘Hey’, thinks I, ‘I have a blog named after my Twitter!’ Perfect!
Except, it’s a wordpress site, and it requires a plug-in (2 really) to support Twitter cards, and if you host your blog with WordPress.com, then you can’t do plug-ins. I’ll need a hosted site. ‘Ok, I’m a web guy’, thinks I, ‘simple enough!’.
Actually, it was pretty simple, but it involved a little money and a fair bit of waiting. The waiting always bothers me more than the money. It was reasonable, just a few bucks a month. So, after setting up hosting, setting up wordpress, getting my domain name moved, re-setting up wordpress because I put it in the wrong directory to be my root site, re-setting up wordpress because I put it in the wrong directory, re-setting up wordpress because I THOUGHT I put it in the wrong directory again (but actually just didn’t wait long enough), and importing my old content… I was ready to set up Twitter Cards.
Setting up Twitter Cards required 2 plug-ins. JM Twitter Cards and WP SEO by Yoast (*actually optional). Configuration involved just simple information like site name and twitter handle. Defaults were used, wherever possible. Once these 2 were setup, I was able to visit Twitter’s sign-up page, from a handy link in the plug-ins. Just a few fields later, I had my application submitted to be twitter-cardified. Upon submission, I was informed the process would take 4 weeks. It was approved within 4 minutes! (Kudos to Twitter on that.)
So, the next step in testing would require a post to test out my also newly integrated ‘post to twitter’ app plugin and see if cards work. This is that post! Let’s see if it all worked.
— ok have to tweak the meta description a bit, still, but otherwise… Success!