such as ‘bookmark to digg, technorati etc” at the end of my article – is there an easy way to do so?
a) How can I add this to a normal website (do I need to paste some sort of code in)
b) How can I add this to a blog such as google blogger (is there a plugin I can use)
AddThis.com has a nice widget, you just have to register and copy-paste a line of javascript code.
There are basically two ways you can add these links to your website, manually code them into your template or use a plugin. Two of the more popular social bookmarking plugins are Gregarious and AddThis. These are both great plugins and offer links to the most popular social bookmarking sites.
Generally, plugins are very easy to install and quick to set up, however they can also add significant time to your overall page load. This is one of the reasons I chose to manually add these links to my template instead of using a plugin.
Manually editing your template doesn’t have to be scary and usually, with some proper guidance, can be very easy. The most important thing to remember is to make a back up of the file your are editing, that way if you mess it up beyond repair you can just simply replace the file you messed up with your working backup and all is back to normal.
Choose Your Social Bookmarking Links
Alright, let’s get to it. The first step is to decide which social bookmarking site you want to provide submission links to. As a rule of thumb I would keep this list to under five. Any more than that and your site might start to look cluttered. I chose Digg, Stumble, Del.icio.us and Technorati because they’re popular and because of personal preference. You can use these or pick the ones that will give your readers the most benefit.
Choose Where To Put Them:-
The next step is to decide where you want to put these links. This is the part where you will want to make a backup of the files your editing. In my case, I chose to put the links at the bottom of my posts, right next to the links for comments and the permalink. To do this I will need to edit two files, the “Main Index” and “Single Page” templates (yours might have a slightly different name).
You can start with either file, as “The Loop” portion of these files should be virtually identical. Once you’ve got one working we’ll just copy the new code to the other file in the same location. I’m going to start with the “Main Index” template (because it’s first in the list).
The first thing you need to do is locate your Loop. Below is a simplified version of “The Loop”, yours may or may not have additional coding. I have marked the beginning, middle and end of “The Loop” as well as where to add your social bookmarking links so they appear at the bottom or each of your posts. You may have to experiment a little depending upon any additional code you have in your Loop.
< ?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?> < =Begin Loop
< =Your Posts
### Put Social Bookmark Links Here ###
< =End Loop
< ?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?>
< ?php endif; ?>