Just a note before this begins: This is an older entry, for use with an older version of Pidgin.
I use Twitter, and a few IM clients, as well as Facebook and MySpace, and I would LOVE my Twitter posts to automatically sync to ALL my “status updates” and “away messages” and I’ve already accomplishd this with Facebook, but I couldn’t get it to work with anything else yet… So after trying so long to get plugins working for AIM to sync my latest Twitter post as my status message on AIM, I decided to give up, nothing worked, not even slightly. But recently I decided to make the switch to Pidgin, and incase you are unaware, Pidgin is what you SHOULD BE USING instead of AIM, or any other instant messaging client, it runs on the AIM, GTalk, MySpaceIM, Yahoo, Windows Live, Bonjour, ICQ, and IRC, and even more, but I’m actually unaware of what those protocols even are at this point, most people use something listed above. Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. This guide is for Windows.
- Install Pidgin from here.
- Download and install Strawberry Perl from here.
- Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD) and then enter:
perl -MCPAN -e shell - Press enter, you should have a CPAN prompt, then enter
install XML::XPathand hit enter. - Wait for the OK message, and for it to return to the CPAN prompt.
- Launch Pidgin, go to the Help menu, and choose “About”
and scoll to the bottom, near the bottom you should see Perl: Enabled. - Download twitter.pl and put it into your Pidgin plugins folder. If you didn’t change then default then it should be
C:\Program Files\pidgin\pluginscopy it there. - Once you have put the file in place, restart Pidgin and go to Tools -> Plugins. There will be a new plugin named “Twitter Status Feed“. Enable it and click on
Configure Plugin. Enter your twitter user name in the dialog box that pops up. - That should be all, be patient, mine didn’t work right away, walk away for 20 minutes to see if it works, mine sometimes has trouble actually applying the status message, it will download it from the Twitter servers, but sometimes it fails at applying it, but it should automatically try again in a matter of minutes.
Charlie D on September 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am says:
Is this just a 1 time setup thing? What I am asking is if I reboot the computer will I have to go through these steps each time?
Jeff on September 27th, 2008 at 3:10 pm says:
Very cool, works great!
Your step-by-step setup was easy to follow and well-written.
Corey on September 30th, 2008 at 7:10 pm says:
@ Charlie D, no its a one-time setup, but I should actually change this, as there is a new version of Pidgin, and a new version of Strawberry Perl that now works with it… And I’ve even discovered a NEW way to install the XML::XPath thats VERY simple.
@Jeff, thanks!!!
Dave on October 20th, 2008 at 7:02 pm says:
Hi Corey,
I’ve been trying to get Perl and Pidgin to play together for a while and have had no luck…
I’ve tried various combinations of Pidgin 2.5.0, 2.5.1 and 2.5.2 alogn with ActivePerl 824 and also following your details and using strawberry-perl-5.8.8.2
Whatever I do, Pidgin just seems to ignore it, and if I check Help > About I get
Perl: Disabled
However it is installed if I goto a cmd prompt and tpye perl I get:
C:\>perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
any ideas?
Thanks
Dave
Dave on October 20th, 2008 at 7:28 pm says:
Fixed it…Pidgin 2.5 or above requires Perl 5.10 or above.
Thanks for the great tips it all helped get me there
m on October 31st, 2008 at 6:23 am says:
If you are on a Mac Adium does all of the above, out of the box.
Pidgin is OK, but Adium if much better for Mac heads.
Corey on November 8th, 2008 at 4:35 pm says:
Although I appear to be, i’m not 100% machead =P