Want more attention for your blog? Then ask your visitors to help you.

As part of the ongoing series on WordPress.com Blog Bling, let’s add some social bookmarking links to your WordPress blogs.

Submission Links or Social Bookmarking Links are a series of links found on many blogs today which “help” the visitor add the post to their social bookmarking service such as Technorati, Bloglines, Rededit, Spurl, Furl, ma.gnolia, Feedmarker, digg, Blinklist, and others.

These colorful rows of little icons litter blogs all over the world. The idea is to help the visitor easily add the post to their social bookmarking service. Most serious bloggers are now removing these from the posts as most people have a browser bookmarklet or tool to help them add the post. Still, a lot of people want them.

Let’s look first at how full version WordPress users can add social bookmarking links to their blogs, and then we’ll get to more WordPress.com Blog Bling with your own social bookmarking links.

Social Bookmarking Links for Full Version WordPress Blogs

Full-version WordPress users have several different social bookmarking WordPress Plugins to choose from to help them automatically add social bookmarking links to their WordPress blogs. These include:

• Cal Evans’ WP-Notables Social Bookmark Submit Links WordPress Plugin
• AddMySite WordPress Plugin
• PunchCard WordPress Plugin
• Social Bookmarks WordPress Plugin
• Social Bookmark Links WordPress Plugin
• WordPress Socializer Plugin
• Push.cx Sociable WordPress Plugin
• Alex King – Share This WordPress Plugin
• Name Dropper WordPress Plugin (text only links)
• Social Bookmarks sidebar widget for WordPress
• Social Bookmark Tool
• Semiologic’s Subscribe Me WordPress Plugin
• New Cyber Tech – New and Improved Social Bookmarks Bar WordPress Plugin

There is another alternative that works for both full-version WordPress blogs and WordPress.com blogs. IFeedReaders offers an online do-it-yourself program that allows you to select from a list of social bookmarking services and generate a list of social bookmark buttons. Full version WordPress blogs can use the “blog specific” version to create a list of social bookmarking links to add to your WordPress Theme template files. WordPress.com bloggers can use “For Static Page” to create the HTML code to copy and paste in the bottom of your blog post.

Bookmarkz has a social bookmark submit links generator which creates a javascript file for full version WordPress blogs. You can choose from dozens of different bookmarking services, making the customization process easy.

If you are a do-it-yourself kind of blogger and web designer, then here are some options you can use to do this with your full-version WordPress blog or WordPress.com blog.

Altering Your WordPress Theme to Include Social Bookmarking Links

You don’t need a WordPress Plugin to create your own custom series of social bookmarking links on full version WordPress blogs. You just need to add the links to your WordPress Theme template files.

WordPress Themes use one of two template files to generate single post views on your WordPress blog: index.php and single.php. You will need to edit this with the WordPress built-in text editor or your own text editor program.

Placement of the social bookmarking code is within the WordPress Loop. It can be placed within the codes anywhere after the_content() template tag and before the comments_template() section. You might have related posts or another series of Post Meta Data Section template tags or code in that section, so you may want the social bookmarking code to be before the post meta data section or within it.

The links have a basic format, each one customized with a link to the social bookmarking code’s submission form. The basic format is:

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<a href="http://social.bookmark.com/submitlink.php?title=<?php the_title() ?>&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Submit to Social Bookmark Service" target="_blank">Social Bookmark Link</a>

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The exact format may change depending upon the social bookmarking service’s specifications.

Two template tags are used to generate the individual links on all social bookmarking submission links. The the_title() template tag generates the post title and the the_permalink() template tag generates the link to the post. The target="_blank" attribute opens the submission link in a new window or tab, keeping the original article open.

Social bookmarking links can feature the text title of the service or an icon. While many people use images in their social bookmarking submission links, some use text. The above example shows the text title.

The following example layout shows an icon instead of text:

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<a href="http://social.bookmark.com/submitlink.php?title=<?php the_title() ?>&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Submit to Social Bookmark Service" target="_blank"><img src="/images/socialservice.gif" alt="Bookmark icon" /></a>

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And some use a combination of both text and icons.

The following is an example of the text links to the most popular social bookmarking services, with the WordPress template tags in place. Just copy and paste this onto your WordPress template file. Edit it to match your specific needs and favorite social bookmarking services.

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<p><strong>Submit Article:</strong> <a href="http://blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Description=<?php the_title() ?>&Url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="BlinkList Submit" target="_blank"> BlinkList</a> |
<a href="http://blogmarks.net/my/new.php?mini=1&title=<?php the_title() ?>&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Blogmarks" target="_blank">Blogmarks</a> |
<a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit Post to Digg" target="_blank">Digg</a> |
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Del.icio.us" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a> |
<a href="http://ekstreme.com/socializer/?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Ekstreme Socializer" target="_blank">Ekstreme Socializer</a> |
<a href="http://www.feedmarker.com/admin.php?do=bookmarklet_mark&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>;" title="Submit to Feedmarker" target="_blank">Feedmarker</a> |
<a href="http://furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<?php the_title() ?>&u=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Submit to Furl" target="_blank">Furl</a> |
<a href="http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Google Bookmarks" target="_blank">Google Bookmarks</a> |
<a href="http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?%20url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to ma.gnolia" target="_blank">ma.gnolia</a> |
<a href="http://www.netvouz.com/action/submitBookmark?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="submit to Netvous" target="_blank">Netvouz</a> |
<a href="http://www.rawsugar.com/pages/tagger.faces?turl=<?php the_permalink() ?>;&tttl=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Save to RawSugar" target="_blank">RawSugar</a> |
<a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit Reddit" target="_blank">Reddit</a> |
<a href="http://scuttle.org/bookmarks.php/pass?action=add&address=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Scuttle" target="_blank">Scuttle</a> |
<a href="http://www.shadows.com/features/tcr.htm?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Shadows" target="_blank">Shadows</a> |
<a href="http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Simpy"target="_blank">Simpy</a> |
<a href="http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?title=<?php the_title() ?>&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="submit to Spurl" target="_blank">Spurl</a> |
<a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Submit to Technorati" target="_blank">Technorati</a> |
<a href="http://unalog.com/my/stack/link?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Unalog" target="_blank">Unalog</a> |
<a href="http://www.wink.com/_/tag?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&doctitle=<?php the_title() ?>" title="Submit to Wink" target="_blank">Wink</a> |
<a href="http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=<?php the_title() ?>&u=<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="Submit to Yahoo MyWeb2" target="_blank">Yahoo MyWeb2</a></p>

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Once you have put the social bookmarking code within your WordPress Theme template files, save the file and upload it to your WordPress Theme directory and it will automatically generate the list on every post on your blog.

WordPress.com Do-It-Yourself Social Bookmarking Links

Adding social bookmarking site submission links to your WordPress.com blog is a little more challenging, though in theory, it isn’t much different from how it’s done on full version WordPress blogs. The difference is that instead of using template files to automatically generate the post title and URL (address), you have to do it manually.

Recently, ArchaeoAstronomy come up with a javascript bookmarklet for social bookmarking links using the same technique I developed with A Tagging Bookmarklet for WordPress and WordPress.com Users.

ArchaeoAstronomy built a Social Bookmarking Site Submission Bookmarklet for WordPress.com generator. Visit the page, choose which social bookmarking sites you want to feature, and then generate the bookmarklet. Click and drag the resulting link to your browser’s bookmark bar and you are only a few clicks from a social bookmarking link list on any post you writing on WordPress.com.

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Social Bookmarks:

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To use ArchaeoAstronomy’s bookmarklet, follow these steps:

1. On the Write Post panel, in the Page slug box, type in, with hyphens (dashes) the title of your post. Make it all lower case, no punctuation ( Do Not Use !, ?, “, ‘, $, #, @, &, etc.). For example:

   social-bookmarking-submit-links-on-wordpress-blogs

2. Copy the page slug.
3. Click the Social Links bookmarklet on your bookmarks bar.
4. Paste in the page slug.
5. Click Okay.
6. Copy the resulting text and code and close the popup window.
7. Paste the code into the bottom of your blog post.
8. Save and/or Publish your post.

You can customize the code on the Social Links bookmarklet by right clicking the bookmarklet and choosing Properties. Edit the code to your specific needs, such as removing images to feature only text links, or to change the title. See this post for more help on using the bookmarklet.

There are some limitations to ArchaeoAstronomy’s Submit Links bookmarklet. It grabs today’s date, so if you are working on future posts, you will have to manually change the date with a search and replace in a text editor to adjust the date to the desired one for publishing. Avoid changing the release date on such posts.

If you change the title of the post, and want the page slug changed, you will need to either recreate a new submit links bar, or search and replace the old page title with the new one, including the page slug.

The last icon in the list is to ArchaeoAstronomy’s blog if you don’t recognize it.

For those who don’t use future posts, this is a quick and easy social bookmarking links too.

Another method described above for full version WordPress users is IFeedReaders, an online do-it-yourself program that allows you to select from a list of social bookmarking services and generate a list of social bookmark buttons. WordPress.com bloggers can choose “For Static Page” to create the HTML code to copy and paste in the bottom of your blog post. You have to run this for every post, unfortunately.

Creating Social Bookmarking Links the Manual Method

For those who want to know how I did this prior to ArchaeoAstronomy’s Social Bookmarking Links Generator, here is the manual method.

As described above, the format for a social bookmarking link is:

[social bookmarking link code]+[post title]+[post URL]

The social bookmarking site submission link code is the same on every post. What changes is the “post title” and “post URL”. These must be customized and replaced for every post you write.

I keep a text editor open all the time as I work. I take notes, build up link lists for reference, and do a lot coding. I also keep a text file with the code for my submit links list, so it’s a fast and easy process to add these to my posts.

The step-by-step process to manually create social bookmarking links (text only) on your WordPress.com blog is:

1. Write your post and save it to release in the near future.
2. Locate and copy the URL for the published post.
3. In your social bookmarking links file saved in a text editor, search and replace the URL in the files with the new URL from the new post.
4. Search and replace the title in the code with the new post title.
5. Edit the published-but-not-released post.
6. Copy and paste the social bookmarking links into the bottom of the post content.
7. Change the release time and date, if desired.
8. Save the post.

The code saved in a text editor for searching, replacing, and copying and pasting into your WordPress.com blog is as follows, customized to your specific needs and favorite social bookmarking services:

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<p><strong>Submit Article:</strong> <a href="http://blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Description=POSTTITLE&Url=POSTURL" title="BlinkList Submit" target="_blank"> BlinkList</a> |
<a href="http://blogmarks.net/my/new.php?mini=1&title=POSTTITLE&url=POSTURL" title="Blogmarks" target="_blank">Blogmarks</a> |
<a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit Post to Digg" target="_blank">Digg</a> |
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Del.icio.us" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a> |
<a href="http://ekstreme.com/socializer/?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Ekstreme Socializer" target="_blank">Ekstreme Socializer</a> |
<a href="http://www.feedmarker.com/admin.php?do=bookmarklet_mark&url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE;" title="Submit to Feedmarker" target="_blank">Feedmarker</a> |
<a href="http://furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=POSTTITLE&u=POSTURL" title="Submit to Furl" target="_blank">Furl</a> |
<a href="http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Google Bookmarks" target="_blank">Google Bookmarks</a> |
<a href="http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?%20url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to ma.gnolia" target="_blank">ma.gnolia</a> |
<a href="http://www.netvouz.com/action/submitBookmark?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="submit to Netvous" target="_blank">Netvouz</a> |
<a href="http://www.rawsugar.com/pages/tagger.faces?turl=POSTURL;&tttl=POSTTITLE" title="Save to RawSugar" target="_blank">RawSugar</a> |
<a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit Reddit" target="_blank">Reddit</a> |
<a href="http://scuttle.org/bookmarks.php/pass?action=add&address=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Scuttle" target="_blank">Scuttle</a> |
<a href="http://www.shadows.com/features/tcr.htm?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Shadows" target="_blank">Shadows</a> |
<a href="http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Simpy"target="_blank">Simpy</a> |
<a href="http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?title=POSTTITLE&url=POSTURL" title="submit to Spurl" target="_blank">Spurl</a> |
<a href="http://technorati.com/faves?add=POSTURL" title="Submit to Technorati" target="_blank">Technorati</a> |
<a href="http://unalog.com/my/stack/link?url=POSTURL&title=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Unalog" target="_blank">Unalog</a> |
<a href="http://www.wink.com/_/tag?url=POSTURL&doctitle=POSTTITLE" title="Submit to Wink" target="_blank">Wink</a> |
<a href="http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=POSTTITLE&u=POSTURL" title="Submit to Yahoo MyWeb2" target="_blank">Yahoo MyWeb2</a></p>

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Simply search and replace the correct information into the POSTTITLE and POSTURL placeholders, then copy and paste the code into your WordPress.com blog.

If you would like to use graphic icons instead of text, simply replace the link text with the graphic icon. 3 Spots and Poulair.eu have vast lists of social bookmarking icons for downloading and social bookmarking submit link codes.

Using Social Bookmarking Submission Links

Social bookmarking links add visual clutter to your blogs. Many bloggers have stopped using them, understanding that serious users of social bookmarking services have their own tools for site submissions, so why be redundant. Others use them when they feel they need them, such as on very popular posts.

As a rule, I don’t use my submit links list on every post. In my opinion, not every post is worthy of adding to the core of valuable documents bookmarked online.

Here are some more tips for using social bookmarking site submission links:

1. Make sure there are no spaces before or after the title, only between the words. Do not use /, \, or other not nice characters that can break link code.
2. Social bookmarking services come and go as the trends shift, so check frequently to see if the blogging services list you use needs to be updated.
3. In these examples, I’ve used a space+pipe+space ( | ) to separate the links. You can use a space, comma, brackets, or other visual aid to separate the links. If you are using graphic icons, put a space between the links so the graphics aren’t crowded together.
4. If you are using graphic icon images, keep the images about the same height to create a uniform visual line of icons.
5. Break the list into short rows or allow them to wrap to a second line gracefully. If they won’t wrap around as the page width changes, readers will have to vertically scroll to get to the last icon links on your list.

Have fun adding some social bookmarking blog bling to your blogs!

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network