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How can I add Digg and Del.icio.us links to my blog?

One thing I really like about your blog, Dave, is your little links to both Digg and Del.icio.us. Simple, neat, but I'm baffled, how the heck do you do that within a Movable Type template? Do you mind sharing with us rabble? :]

Dave's Answer:

Hey, hey, no dissin' yourself now. There are no rabble in the blogosphere. Um, except maybe... well, nevermind. Anyway, anyone who reads MY blog certainly isn't rabble!

Yeah, I'm a definite fan of both Digg.com and the shared bookmark site Del.icio.us, so when I saw they were becoming more popular, I added a few lines to my Movable Type blog template to make it really easy for people to either vote for the page on Digg or bookmark it on Del.icio.us.

Let me show you a stripped down version:

Help others find this article:
<a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>">Digg
It!</a> or
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&title=Dave%20Taylor">
Bookmark it!</a>

Not too difficult to comprehend, I hope, and most of the complexity is simply because the desired URLs from the two services include a few additional fields of information over and above the page URL itself.

If you scroll down just a wee bit after this article, however, you'll notice that I also include two small iconic graphics to bring just a bit more attention to the links (since I like showing up on Digg, after all!). As a result, my actual code is a little bit more complex than what's shown above, but you can always just "View Source" one of my pages to see the exact img src and so on. It's pretty simple stuff.

Finally, there are official pages that detail tools you can use to include these sort of links too, if you don't want a cobbled-together approach. Digg has its Digg One-Click Submission information that can be interesting reading, and Del.icio.us has Help For Publishers too, some slick JavaScript.

Hey, why not test it out? Click Here to Vote for This Article at Digg.com!

Hope that helps clarify things and extends your blog functionality.

Note: if someone can send me along the equivalent for Wordpress, I'd be happy to append that snippet to this article too. Thanks.

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Simpy.

Categorized: Blogs and RSS Feeds (Article 6839)
Tagged: blog, blogging, bookmark this page, del.icio.us, delicious, digg
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Comments

I also would love to see the wordpress code on how to do it.

I wish there were some good books that simplified creating templates for blogs and what not...

Hilary

Posted by: Hilary at November 7, 2006 3:49 PM

I would like to know how to add these buttons to a phpbb forum.

Posted by: Scottux at November 9, 2006 7:14 PM

Hi Dave, here's my cheat sheet contribution for getting Digg and Del.icio.us icons and links into a Wordpress plugin.

Use Denis 'Bookmark Me' plugin. Simple eh?

It's located here:
www.semiologic.com/software/bookmark-me/

In fact, it let's you easily add links to a host of other social bookmarking sites to your entries, plus choose whether you want to display the Bookmark's Name, or just display the bookmark icon.

On the download page, Denis reveals 2 lines of code to insert into your Wordpress templates.

Sidenote: If you're already a customer of his Pro theme (www.WordpressProTheme.com), then no worries - this bookmark plugin is already built in, and waiting for you to activate, and customize. Its a theme I have been using since 2004 for all my professional and personal blogs.

Hope this helps Wordpress users viewing Dave's total value-add blog here at AskDaveTaylor.com.

Dave, enjoy Atlanta - sorry I can't join you, I'll be thinking of you while I'm engaged in family functions ;-)

Posted by: Sherman Hu at November 10, 2006 8:12 AM

Neat! I've bunged it in me blog and it works swell. I was such a novice when I started out, I built the whole site in HTML, now I wish I could head to the simplicity of using Wordpress or the like. Anyhow, the code works fine, It's just a bit more hassle for me to write it in each time. Thanks Dave Taylor!

Posted by: Adam Pope at December 19, 2006 3:43 PM

Do you host your blog on wordpress??Just let me know plz

Posted by: drohi at April 23, 2007 4:31 AM

Drohl, nope, this is a Movable Type weblog hosted on my own server. You can find out more about MT at http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype

For the record, WordPress is a splendid tool too, but I am not a fan of their *hosted* service, just the software tool.

Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 23, 2007 12:05 PM

Cool, I've been looking for this addition, thanks for the clear description. Do you know offhand if it works in MT 4?

Posted by: Swanksalot at September 21, 2007 11:05 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!