Fixing the Mystique theme Twitter settings issue

I am using the Mystique theme for this WordPress blog. It is a nice theme, however there is an issue that needs fixing – The Twitter widget in the default theme layout somehow defaults to WordPress’s Twitter account, and there’s no setting for that. The Twitter username is hardcoded into the theme code.

In this article, I will post the changes I did to the original theme in order to fix the Twitter issue. At the end of the article, I will provide a link to a zip file which you can download, extract to the Mystique’s theme directory and overwrite the original theme files.

Before that, disclaimers:

1. I am not a WordPress expert. This is my first time hacking away a WordPress theme. I mostly did quick tries-n-errors when implementing this hack.
2. This hack is not in any way endorsed by the original creator of the Mystique theme.

With that said, use this hack at your own risk. I will appreciate any feedback if you do try out this hack.

Adding a Twitter tab to the Mystique settings

I added a new tab for the Mystique settings. Take a look at the following screenshot to see how it looks like:

Under that tab, you can set your own Twitter username to be used instead of the default WordPress’s.

The following code changes were made to lib/admin.php:

if (isset($_POST['head_code'])): $options['head_code'] = stripslashes($_POST['head_code']); endif;
if (isset($_POST['twitter_username'])): $options['twitter_username'] = stripslashes($_POST['twitter_username']); endif; // Hacked by Amry
for ($i=1; $i<=6; $i++)

 <li><a href='#tab-8'><?php _e("User CSS","mystique"); ?></a></li>
 <li><a href='#tab-9'><?php _e("Twitter","mystique"); ?></a></li><!-- Hacked by Amry -->
</ul>

 <!-- Hacked by Amry -->
 <div id="tab-9">
  <table style="width: auto">
   <tr>
    <th scope="row"><p><?php _e("Twitter Username","mystique"); ?></p></th>
    <td><input name="twitter_username" id="opt_twitter_username" type="text" value="<?php $twitter_username = wp_specialchars(get_mystique_option('twitter_username')); echo $twitter_username != '' ? $twitter_username : 'wordpress'; ?>" /></td>
   </tr>

   <tr>
    <th scope="row"></th>
    <td>
     <h3><?php _e("What does this do?","mystique"); ?></h3>
     <ul style="list-style: disc">
      <li><em><?php printf(__('link the Twitter settings in the default layout to your own account','mystique')); ?></em></li>
      <li><em><?php printf(__('this is hacked by <a href="http://ShamsulAmry.com/blog/fixing-mystique-theme-twitter-issue">Amry</a> and is not supported by the original theme creator, use at your own risk','mystique')); ?></em></li>
     </ul>
    </td>
   </tr>

  </table>
 </div>

</div>
<!-- /sections -->

Fixing the Twitter widget in the sidebar

The original theme hardcoded the Twitter username to always use “wordpress”. I changed it a bit so that it reads from the saved setting in the previous step.

The following code changes were made to sidebar.php:

<?php if(function_exists('the_widget')):  // only in wp 2.8+

 the_widget('SidebarTabsWidget', array('orderby' => 'name', 'postcount' => true, 'showcategories' => true, 'showtags' => true, 'showarchives' => true, 'showpopular' => true, 'showrecentcomm' => true), array('widget_id'=>'instance-sidebartabswidget','before_widget' => '<li><div>','after_widget' => '</div></li>','before_title' => '<h3><span>','after_title' => '</span></h3><div></div><div></div>'));

 // Hacked by Amry
 $twitter_username = wp_specialchars(get_mystique_option('twitter_username'));
 if ($twitter_username == '') $twitter_username = 'wordpress';

 the_widget('TwitterWidget', array('title'=>__('My latest tweets','mystique'), 'twituser'=>$twitter_username, 'twitcount'=>'4'), array('widget_id'=>'instance-twitterwidget','before_widget' => '<li><div>','after_widget' => '</div></li>','before_title' => '<h3><span>','after_title' => '</span></h3><div></div><div></div>'));

 the_widget('LoginWidget', array(), array('widget_id'=>'instance-loginwidget','before_widget' => '<li><div>','after_widget' => '</div></li>','before_title' => '<h3><span>','after_title' => '</span></h3><div></div><div></div>'));

 endif; ?>

Fixing the Twitter account linked from the header

The original code in the theme was somehow reading the Twitter username from some setting. Nevertheless, I commented that out and replaced it so that it reads from the saved setting that I had just created.

The following code changes were made to header.php:

<?php
 //$twituser = get_mystique_option('twitter_id');
 // if(is_active_widget('TwitterWidget'))
 // Hacked by Amry
 //$twitinfo =  get_option('mystique-twitter');
 //$twituser = $twitinfo['last_twitter_id'];
 $twituser = wp_specialchars(get_mystique_option('twitter_username'));
 if ($twituser == '') $twituser = 'wordpress';

 if ($twituser): ?>
 <a href="http://www.twitter.com/<?php echo $twituser; ?>" title="<?php _e("Follow me on Twitter!","mystique"); ?>"><span><?php _e("Follow me on Twitter!","mystique"); ?></span></a>
 <?php endif; ?>

Download the changed files

Click to download: Mystique-Twitter-fix.zip. This zip file contains lib/header.php, sidebar.php and header.php. Simply overwrite the original theme files with these to implement the changes. It would be a good practice to back up the original files before overwriting it in case you need to revert back.
Hope this helps!