post rss to Twitter with a custom URL shortener
I’ve been doing some experimenting and I believe I’ve figured how to do this with tools already out there (without building your own solution and hosting it). All you need is an RSS feed, a domain you control and a twitter account.
- Start with logging in to bitly.com with your twitter (or create a new account)
- Setup your custom domain (this is where you need access to your DNS records)
- Get your API login and API password here, you’ll need these later.
- Log in to twitterfeed.com, I used my Blogger openID.
- Create a new feed using the rss URL of your choice. I used my Blogger blog.
- In the advanced settings, setup bitly as your shortener and use the API credentials.
- Done
Then you write a blog post about how you did it and see if it worked. The one thing I don’t like is when you have twitter connected to Facebook, your custom link gets converted to a t.co address. They must do it for safety, but it still sucks. Brand is important.
Update: Only issue I find is that the root of your domain gets taken over by bitly; you have to pay them a little less than 1000$ per month to get the ability to redirect it.
Update 2: Forget everything I said and use yourls