• Home
  • About Mitch
  • Speaking
  • Articles
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About Mitch
  • Speaking
  • Articles
  • Contact

Digital Strategist

WordPress Developer

Content Creator

Unapologetic Punk

Mitch Canter

  • X
  • Bluesky
  • GitHub
  • Twitch
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
WordPress

Twitch Conditional – A WordPress Plugin for Twitch Streamers

CMDR Mitchcraft

Reading time: 2 minutes

I love Twitch. I actually spend my work day with one browser dedicated to Twitch, and subscribe to MrHappy’s daily Stream. So when rumors surfaced a few years ago their API, of course I wanted a way to interface with that API.

In doing research, I realized that a lot of streamers don’t have real websites. A few of the top ones do, but I think it’s because the automation between Twitch and a true website is “iffy” – you have to manually update every time your stream goes live, and that takes precious time away from interacting with the community (and actually streaming).

What if there was a way to automatically update your website to let people know that you were streaming – and that would turn itself off once the stream was over.

Twitch Conditional

I love the way WordPress handles conditional statements; there’s very specific “if” statements built into the core, and it lets you check for any number of flags to be set – is it a Category? is it a Tag? is it page two of some random archive? There’s a conditional for that. So what if there was a way to work with Twitch the same way?

The Twitch Conditional WordPress plugin allows you to see when you – or your favorite streamer – is online, and hides/shows content accordingly.

This plugin takes one variables in the options panel: a Client ID. You can get that from your profile: https://www.twitch.tv/settings/connections. Log in, generate a client ID, and then put it in the options pane. That’s the only set up you need.

When you’re developing your website, you can use something similar to this:

<?php if (twitch_is_live('username')) { ?>
    <p><a href="##twitch_url##">Currently Streaming Live!</a></p>
<?php } else { ?>
    <p>This Twitch user is currently offline!</p>
<?php } ?>

Breaking that down: If USERNAME is live, display a link to the twitch stream. If not, display some text that says the user is offline.

You could get really in-depth, hiding and showing entire sections of the site, embedding your twitch stream into the section so that it shows up when you go online. Or you could do a simple offline/online check with a special icon.  The possibilities are endless.

One day I’ll edit this plugin to have shortcodes – for now, the developer piece is what I was really wanted to get finished.

You can download the plugin here, on Github: https://github.com/thatmitchcanter/twitch-conditional

  • 3+ Things Every Content Creator Needs In 2020

    3+ Things Every Content Creator Needs In 2020

    Reading time: 3 minutes

    There is no better time to stake your claim online. The Internet, one thought to be a ‘passing fad‘, is still here and going stronger than ever. But it’s not enough to just put your voice out on every social media platform you come across. In order to truly succeed online, there are certain necessities…

    Digital Strategy, WordPress
  • Yes, Another WordPress Update.  So?

    Yes, Another WordPress Update. So?

    Reading time: 1 minute

    WordPress released their press release about WordPress 3.0.4.  As soon as it did, I saw the WordPress hashtag on twitter light up – people complaining about having yet another security update.  I hate to get on a soapbox about this, but seriously – you’re going to complain about people working to make your site as…

    WordPress