Using Technorati’s API and PHP
UPDATE: March 3, 2007 – Released Technorati Rank WordPress Plugin.
UPDATE: Well it winds up that Technorati has a daily query limit. I found out the hard way, they shut me off. If you’ve installed the widget, you’ll see that it states Error with a link back to the Project Page so that you can download and host the code yourself. I’ve also updated the code so that once you reach the Daily allotment of API calls, it will simply change into an “Add to Favorites” link.
Being a database marketer by trade, I have two flaws (okay … many more than two, but these have to do with this post). I work well with numeric goals and I work well organizing and logically aligning projects, people, software, etc. Even my books are organized (left side of the book case is software and development, right-side top is business, bottom-right is fiction).
The numeric flaw keeps me looking at Technorati, Google Analytics, and Google Adsense all day, everyday. Techorati is one of those ones that really gets my interest because it provides me with who’s linking to me. I love to visit those sites and see what they are saying or what they found useful. In order to recognize whether or not my rank changed, though, I need to do a search on my blog.
I needed something quicker so I programmed a little ‘widget’ to Technorati’s API to obtain my rank quickly and easily. It’s actually what’s displaying the rank at the top of this post. If you’d like to see how, hit my project page up.
I built it using PHP5+ (It uses SimpleXML), cURL, and JavaScript. SimpleXML is an incredibly powerful XML engine! It’s much easier to program with than the old parsing engine. Code Samples are on the project page as well.
