Blogging Tips: Link Referral and Bookmarking Bar

About a month ago I added a bar below all of my posts that allows people to link or bookmark my posts. This is helpful for me since when people do that it gives my post/blog more exposure (always appreciated) and it helps readers since they can bookmark post of mine that they like or want to easily find later.

I had been meaning to share the steps to putting an “add this” bar on your blog page but of course with all the move stuff I totally forgot until Shanon from fookaDESIGNS reminded me. Seriously I spent all night figuring it out, searching, deciding which type of link referral to use, figuring how to make it work, etc. One big caveat though, I’m not a programmer at all. I can just tell you what I did and what worked for me. I highly recommend making a copy of your blog template before making any changes just in case.

1) I used Add This. Go here to find the one I used. Follow their instructions for which ever service and style (I used the 3rd one) you use/want.
2) Copy and Paste the code into your template. You get to your template in blogger by going to “layout” then “edit html” make sure to check the “expand widgets template”. If you have a hard time finding where to paste the code use “ctrl f” while you are on the page with your blog template and it should open up a find bar at the bottom of your page and search for < div class=’post-footer’> (but without the space after the <. (note the directions to tell you to post the code below the footer line but mine worked pasted above that footer line)
3) It will only have a few links show up and the share in front of it. 4) I deleted the share part of the code so that the first part of my code looks like this: < !– AddThis Button BEGIN –>
< div class=’addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style’ expr:addthis:title=’data:post.title’ expr:addthis:url=’data:post.url’>
< a class=’addthis_button_stumbleupon’/>
(I added spaces after all of these < so it wouldn’t go into code language, so you’ll want to delete those if you want to copy mine)
5) Next I added more buttons by just trying things out, if you notice every button had this basic code < a class=’addthis_button_linktospot’/> I just copied the code line and then typed in common places people link to like technorati, delicious, digg, etc. in place of the stumbleupon. There are tons that work.
6) Next I moved them around by copy and pasting above or below.
7) Finally I previewed it and saved it. I hope that helps some of you who have been wanting to do this and hopefully it works for you.