Connecting Plurk to Goji

Plurk is a social network with a devoted following, particularly in Taiwan and parts of South-East Asia, built around a horizontal timeline of short posts. If your audience is there, it is a channel your competitors have almost certainly ignored. Connecting it to Goji posts each new article to your timeline automatically.

What connecting Plurk gives you

• Automatic posts. Each new article is shared to your timeline with its headline and a link back to your site.
• A market others skip. Very few businesses publish there consistently, so a steady presence stands out more than it would on a crowded network.
• Your own account. Posts appear as you, exactly as if you had written them.
• One-click sign-in. You approve access with your Plurk account; nothing is copied or pasted.

Before you start

You need a Plurk account you can sign in to. That is genuinely all — there is no business account to create, no verification queue and no approval process, which makes this one of the quickest channels on the list to set up.

It is worth deciding in advance whether every article should go there. Plurk's culture is conversational, and a timeline consisting only of automated links reads as a feed rather than a person. Publishing rules let you send a subset — the articles most likely to interest that audience — rather than everything.

How to connect it

1. Open Channels from the sidebar and choose Plurk.
2. Sign in to Plurk when prompted. You are signing in to Plurk itself; Goji never sees your password.
3. Approve the request to post on your behalf.
4. You are returned to Goji with the account connected.

Publishing starts with the next article your rules pick up. Existing articles are not posted retroactively, so connecting the channel will not flood your timeline with everything you have ever written.

What a Plurk post looks like

Plurk posts are short by design. Each one carries the headline, a trimmed summary where there is room, and the link. Plurk builds its own preview card from the link, so the title, description and image your site publishes in its meta tags are what readers actually see.

Because the format is compact, headlines carry most of the weight here. A headline that states the point plainly will travel considerably further than one that depends on the article for context.

If something goes wrong

• Authorisation failed. Access was declined, or the session expired before you approved it. Try connecting again.
• Posting stopped after working for a while. Access was revoked in your Plurk account settings, or the password changed. Reconnect the channel.
• The post looks shortened. It exceeded Plurk's length limit and was trimmed; the link is always kept, because a post that lost its link is worth nothing.
• The preview shows the wrong picture. That comes from your site's Open Graph image for the article, not from the post itself.

Common questions

Can I connect more than one Plurk account? Yes. Connect the channel again while signed in to the other account.

Does it reply to comments? No. Plurk is a publishing channel here, not an inbox — replies happen on Plurk.

Is there a cost? No. Plurk accounts and posting are free.

How do I stop it? Disconnect the channel, or revoke access in Plurk. Either stops future posts and leaves everything already published untouched.