We don’t actually use the “Share This” plugin on the Editor’s Ink blog, but I have used it on other blogs and it does a lot with just a little effort. That’s the nature of WordPress plugins in general, but this little wonder is great for those trying to spread the word about their blogs and has a nice SEO aspect.

Share This, created by Alex King, lets your blog readers share a post with friends via e-mail or with the wider world via social bookmarking sites. If you’re not familiar with social bookmarking, check out Digg, Del.icio.us, Netscape and Reddit (there are many others). After you’ve installed the plugin, a small “Share This” icon shows on your site, beneath each post. Upon clicking on the link, javascript functionality opens a “dialogue box” that the reader can use to either e-mail the link of the post to a friend or submit to a social bookmarking site. An image indicating the “open” share this dialogue box is shown below.

To install Share This, download it directly from Alex King’s website. Unless you have a custom WordPress installation, you can simply upload the contents of the Share This folder (the entire folder) to your plugins directory. If you are running a WordPress version prior to 2.1, upload the included prototype.js file to your wp-includes/js/ directory. Then, go to your “Plugins” management area in the dashboard and activate the plugin.

I had a couple of modifications to my installs that I’ll share here as well. Generally, the Share This plugin will place the Share This icon automatically to each post, but this gives you no control over where the icon actually appears. A stickler for detail, I did the following:

1) Place this code in the appropriate location where you’d like the icon to appear: <?php akst_share_link(); ?>

You’ll have to repeat this for each file, i.e. - single.php, archives.php, index.php.

2) Edit the share-this.php file (in the share-this plugin folder that you uploaded). Change @define(‘AKST_ADDTOCONTENT’, true;) to @define(‘AKST_ADDTOCONTENT’, false;).

That’s it! This will allow you to place the icon wherever you like in a post and give your users the ability to do your online promotion work for you.

Tags: blog management, blogging, social bookmarking, wordpress, wordpress plugins

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