I never thought about completely implementing a Twitter follower counter within your WordPress themes’ files, but Jean-Baptiste Jung. from WPRecipes.com has come up with an excellent way of achieving such a task.
Okay, so first off, copy and paste the following code, and add it to your current themes function.php file:
function string_getInsertedString($long_string,$short_string,$is_html=false){
if($short_string>=strlen($long_string))return false;
$insertion_length=strlen($long_string)-strlen($short_string);
for($i=0;$i<strlen($short_string);++$i){
if($long_string[$i]!=$short_string[$i])break;
}
$inserted_string=substr($long_string,$i,$insertion_length);
if($is_html && $inserted_string[$insertion_length-1]=='<‘){
$inserted_string='<‘.substr($inserted_string,0,$insertion_length-1);
}
return $inserted_string;
}
function DOMElement_getOuterHTML($document,$element){
$html=$document->saveHTML();
$element->parentNode->removeChild($element);
$html2=$document->saveHTML();
return string_getInsertedString($html,$html2,true);
}
function getFollowers($username){
$x = file_get_contents(“http://twitter.com/”.$username);
$doc = new DomDocument;
@$doc->loadHTML($x);
$ele = $doc->getElementById(‘follower_count’);
$innerHTML=preg_replace(‘/^<[^>]*>(.*)<[^>]*>$/’,”\\1″,DOMElement_getOuterHTML($doc,$ele));
return $innerHTML;
I think you know what’s coming next. Now, copy and paste the following WordPress code anywhere within your template and replace “kdogg290”, with your Twitter username.
<?php echo getFollowers("kdogg290")." followers"; ?>