Twitter is one of the biggest websites in social media and is only going to grow bigger. I've been on Twitter for a few years now and have learned a few tips to help grow your following and be more influential.

Follow

Following other people can increase your following because they may follow you back. Not everyone will follow you back but a good majority of people will.

Reply

If someone sends you an @ reply always make sure to reply to it. If you don't reply to them but are replying to other people then they may get fed up and unfollow you. Also send an @ reply to random people if they ask a question and they may return the favor to you by following.

Email

A good method to pick up new followers is when you email somebody always have a link to your Twitter account, if the person you are emailing is on Twitter they may follow you.

Website

It is always a good thing to link to your Twitter account from your website or blog. People who like what you write about can see where you are most of the time and it also allows them to connect with you.

Business

If you have a business card then it'd be great to include your Twitter username because this allows for people to easily re-connect with you.

Comments

When posting a comment on a blog, instead of posting a link to your website, why not link to your Twitter profile? This will increase the visibility of your Twitter profile on the internet and will probably result in more followers.

Follow Back

If somebody follows you and they are not a bot then return the follow and see how you can connect with that person in different ways to build a relationship.

Clothing

If you want to really increase the visibility of your Twitter account in the real world then why not get a shirt or any other kind of clothing printed with your Twitter username, you never know how many followers you may be walking passed each day.

ReTweet

Retweeting people's links is a great way to get them to follow you, if somebody Retweets a link of mine and I am not following them, I will follow them as a way of saying thanks.

Share your tips

What do you find works for you in gaining more followers? Share your tips below with other readers.

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Don't forget to check out part 1 if you have no read it.

In the second part of this 5 part tutorial series on how to build a Twitter-like website, we will be creating a signup form so that users can register to our website.

We will be adding records to the database that we created in part 1 and creating validation rules to make sure that the user didn't put any invalid data into the form.

Change the base url

Navigate to ci_twitter->system->applications->config->config.php.
Change:

$config['base_url'] = "http://example.com/";

To the path to where CodeIgniter is. On my machine it would be:

$config['base_url'] = "http://tutorials:8888/ci_twitter/";

Create the controller

We need to create a main controller for things such as the home page, sign up page, login page, etc. Go to ci_twitter->system->application->controllers then in the controllers folder create a file called main.php.

Inside our main controller we now need to define the class and the functions inside it.

<?php
class main extends Controller {
 
	function index()
	{
		$this->load->view('main/index');
	}
 
	function signup()
	{
		$this->load->library('form_validation');
		$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url'));
		$this->load->view('main/signup');
	}
 
	function signin()
	{
		$this->load->library('form_validation');
		$this->load->helper('form');
		$this->load->view('main/signin');
	}
 
}
 
?>

If we were to go to http://localhost/ci_twitter/index.php/main/ then we will see a blank page.

Create the views

Before we can see anything we need to create a folder for the functions in our main controller. Go to ci_twitter->system->application->views. Inside the views folder create another folder called main. In the main folder we will create files for each function that we have in the main controller.

Create these files in the main folder we created:

• index.php
• signup.php
• signup_success.php
• signin.php

Go to index.php and enter Hello World. Now if you go to http://localhost/ci_twitter/index.php/main/ you will see Hello World.

The next thing to do is to add a form and text fields so that people can input data. For the sign up page the html is done in the signup.php view file. The validation and processing is done in the main controller inside the signup function.

Add the following code to the signup.php view:

<h2>Sign up</h2>
<?php
echo validation_errors();
echo form_open('main/signup');
?>
 
Full name: <input type="text" name="name" /> <br />
Username: <input type="text" name="username" /> <br />
Password: <input type="password" name="password" /> <br />
Email: <input type="text" name="email" /> <br />
<input type="submit" value="Create my account" name="create" />
 
</form>

Then add this inside signup_success.php:

Your account was created, <?php echo anchor('main/signin', 'login here'); ?>

This is all that we need to do for the sign up view for now. Validation rules is what we will do next in the main controller for sign up.

Validation

When doing form validation all of the validation takes place inside of the controller. For now we will set basic validation rules for each field within the form.

In the main controller replace the code for the signup function with:

	function signup()
	{
		$this->load->library('form_validation');
		$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url'));
 
		$this->form_validation->set_rules('name', 'Name', 'required|min_length[5]|max_length[50]|trim|xss_clean');
		$this->form_validation->set_rules('username', 'Username', 'required|min_length[5]|max_length[50]|trim|xss_clean');
		$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', 'Password', 'required|min_length[5]|max_length[50]|trim|xss_clean');
		$this->form_validation->set_rules('email', 'Email', 'required|min_length[5]|max_length[50]|valid_email');
 
		if($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)
		{
			$this->load->view('main/signup');
		} else {
			$this->load->view('main/signup_success');
		}
 
	}

If you go to the sign up page now you should see that all the validation code works like it should. Now we will add a model so that we can add the user to the users table.

Create user model

Go to the model folder and create a file called User_model.php.

Insert this code into the model:

<?php
class User_model extends Model {
 
	function user_exists($username)
	{
		$this->db->select('username');
		$this->db->from('users');
		$this->db->where('user_username', $username);
		$result = $this->db->count_all_results();
		return $result;
	}
 
	function create_user($fullname, $username, $email, $password)
	{
		$data = array('user_fullname' => $fullname, 'user_username' => $username, 'user_email' => $email, 'user_password' => $password);
		$this->db->insert('users', $data);
	}
}
?>

Now we need to load the User_model in the controller.
Insert this code in the signup function:

$this->load->model('User_model');

We also need to add the user if the validation rules are passed:

$this->User_model->create_user($this->input->post('name'), $this->input->post('username'), $this->input->post('email'), $this->input->post('password'));
$this->load->view('main/signup_success');

Part 3

In part 3 we will be creating a login page and functionality so that people can post messages.

Download

Download

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This tutorial will be the first of a five part series where we will built a social network site similar to Twitter from scratch. We will be using the CodeIgniter framework for the core of the website and jQuery for the effects. In this first part we will be configuring CodeIgniter to display everything correctly and we will also set up a database and connect to it.

Download and configure

Download the CodeIgniter framework from their website. We don't need to download anything for jQuery because we will be loading it directly from Google as it's quicker to load.

Once you have downloaded the latest version of CodeIgniter from their website, unzip it and copy the files to your public_html folder or equivalent. Rename the CodeIgniter folder to ci_twitter.

Now if you go to http://localhost/ci_twitter you should see something similar to the image below.

Database

We now need configure a database to connect to CodeIgniter so that we can use it to insert and retrieve information. Go to phpMyAdmin or whatever you use for MySQL databases. Create a database called ci_twitter.

CREATE DATABASE `ci_twitter` ;

For now we are only going to create a table for the users, in another part we will create other tables when we need them.

users table:

 CREATE TABLE `ci_twitter`.`users` (
`user_id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY ,
`user_fullname` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_username` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_email` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_password` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_protected_updates` TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`user_location` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_web` VARCHAR( 50 ) NOT NULL ,
`user_bio` VARCHAR( 160 ) NOT NULL
) ENGINE = MYISAM

Configure CodeIgniter

Now that we have set up our database and have inserted a table we will configure CodeIgniter to connect to it.

Navigate to database.php by going to ci_twitter -> system -> application -> config -> database.php. From here enter the correct information for your database so that it connects.

We need to auto load the database library because we will be using it a lot.

Go to autoload.php in the same folder as database.php.

Change:

$autoload['libraries'] = array();

To:

$autoload['libraries'] = array('database');

The database library will now load every time without us having to put $this->load->library('database'); in every controller.

End of Part 1

This is the end of the first part of approximately five parts.

Part 2

Part 2 will be following tomorrow. In part 2 we will be creating a sign up so that we can add users to the database.

Download

You can download part one from here

Related posts:

1. Build a Twitter-like site with CodeIgniter and jQuery Part 2 Don't forget to check out part 1 if you have...
2. Twitter-like pagination using CodeIgniter and jQuery If you use Twitter you'll notice that there is a...
3. Twitter-like pagination using CakePHP and jQuery I have already done this tutorial with CodeIgniter and jQuery...

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