I’ve been listening to TheZone.fm and I heard something interesting “TheZone.fm/twitter” and “TheZone.fm/facebook”
Wow!
This is a great way to put your stations brand first. As a bonus, if you didn’t snag the right twitter account name or facebook page name, your listeners don’t need to know.
But now the nitty gritty: How do actually get it done?
Consider this post a requirements document, or a detailed solution. Give it to the folks that manage your website, and they should be able to use at least one of these solutions
The old HTML fake out
Make two folders on your website called “twitter” and “facebook”. These should be in your home folder ( sometimes called html, sometimes called website, sometimes called yourstationrocks.com, it all depends on your host ).
Open a text editor, anyone will do, and copy the following code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Your Station on Twitter</title>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH"
content="0;url=http://www.twitter.com/MyStationRulesTheAir">
</head>
<body>
Get ready for some tweets!
</body>
</html>
Replace http://www.twitter.com/MyStationRulesTheAir and “Get ready for some tweets!” as you like.
Save it as html
Next, place it into the twitter folder.
Edit the file again with your facebook address and maybe a nice facebook message like “Face this book!” (nah)
Save
And place it in your facebook folder.
Blam! Done!
Let the host do it for you.
Some hosting companies actually provide you with redirect options in you website administration. If this is the case, it all depends on what they use. Sometimes it’s a homegrown program, and other times, it’s something else.
Sign in and hunt for any variation of these terms: forward or, redirect.
It could be under file management, but I’ve also seen it under domain management as well.
When in doubt – pick up the horn and ask if they can do it.
.htaccess – I always see it but never use it
If you see this file, then you can do some nifty things. You’re going to want to download it, edit it, and then put it back where you fond it.
Depending on what you’ve got running, when you open it in a text editor, there may already be some stuff. If that’s the case push it all down a line and add the following lines of code
Redirect /twitter http://www.twitter.com/MyStationRulesTheAir
Redirect /facebook http://www.facebook.com/MyStationRulesTheAir
Of course, replace it with your facebook and twitter locations.
Save it.
Dump it back onto your host.
But I’ve got programmers
In that case, pick up the phone, or walk over and say “Make it so #1”. They might giggle a little. They may also call you Picard or Jean-Luc. When they do, just tug twice on the bottom of your shirt and walk away. ( this of course will loose all meaning if your on the phone )
And then…
No and then. That’s all I’ve got. You can take my word, or wikipedia’s word if mine isn’t good enough.
I hope to see more stations using this method because it puts your station above twitter & facebook. Plus adding a quick “slash twitter” in the bit or sweep is a lot easier for the folks on the mic.
If you come across any other solutions, I’d like to know. As always, the comment box is ready when you are.
