The standard Twitter widget that comes with the Mystique theme has a couple of shortcomings, in my opinion. One, any shortened URL’s are displayed using Twitters t.co link instead of whatever shortener the user may actually be using. I’ve installed a YOURLS site for just this purpose, so I’d like to see my site displayed. Second, hashtags are not linked back to a Twitter search.
Below the fold are a few lines of PHP that will address these problems. A brief word to the wise, these mods only work with Twitter’s API V1. API V1.1 will require OAuth to perform this task.