WordPress Context for Social Media Sites

We are always faced with the challenge of integrating our customer’s content with various other ways to market their product. It’s easy enough to do this with a plug-in or two, and there is certainly no lack of them from which to choose.

But if the design elements of the plug-in you are using do not conform to the overall design plan, why not just use a simple link to your icon of choice from the page? You will typically simplify the process for your reader by doing this, and gain a few other benefits as well.

• Readers are more likely to connect with the social media extension of it is styled the same as the parent site.
• Readers are more likely to actually see the link or links if they are not styled the same as they are on other sites.
• Some plug-ins require calls to other sites for their graphics and tracking. This can drastically slow down your site.

With that in mind, I located a good resource for the basic syntax of some of these links. I’m pouring through a book written by WordPress guru Thord Daniel Hedengren, or TDH as he is known in the industry. His book Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog has listed a few of the direct links to some of the more popular social media outlets. I’m using them as a jumping off point.

I hope you’ll find the reference useful. Happy coding.

Del.icio.us

[php light="true"]<a href="http://delicious.com/post?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>;&title=<?php the_title(); ?>">Save on Del.icio.us</a>[/php]

Digg

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the permalink() ?>">Post to Digg</a>[/php]

Facebook

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=<?php the permalink() ?>"Share on Facebook</a>[/php]

Friendfeed

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://friendfeed.com/?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>">Share on FriendFeed</a>[/php]

Mixx.com

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://www.mixx.com/" onclick="window.location=’http://www.mixx.com/submit?page_url=’+window.location; return:false;">Post to Mixx</a>[/php]

Reddit

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the permalink() ?>&title=<?php the title() ?>">Post to Reddit</a>[/php]

Stumbleupon

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the permalink() ?>&title=<?php the title() ?>">Post to Stumbleupon</a>[/php]

Twitter

[php light="true"]
<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Now reading <?php the_permalink(); ?>Send to Twitter</a>[/php]