Creating Share Links on Posterous

After contemplating whether or not to start a Posterous blog, I finally took the plunge and have genuinely liked most of what Posterous has to offer. Posterous is quick to setup, very clean and extremely user friendly for novice bloggers. They also have the ability for advanced customization but I really like the “out-of-the-box” minimalist theme they give you. Plus, I plan to use Posterous as more of a personal blog and collection of point of ideas, opinions and ramblings. The only down side is the lack of plugins for the platform.

The only plugin I would really want for Posterous is one to allows readers to share content they enjoyed. While Posterous does have a built in “retweet” feature, I’m curious why they didn’t offer more share points for bloggers. Either way, I came up with a script that would allow readers to share on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and Email.

Here’s the instructions:

1.Find advance theme options:  Manage>Settings> Theme and Customize my site> Advanced
*It might ask you to create and a new theme sheet “Clean Sheet (copy)” … hit OK.

2. Locate the body tag: {Body}

3. Right under this tag place this code:

<a title=”Send this page to Twitter!” href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=RT @twitterusername {Title} {Permalink}” target=”_blank”>Tweet This!</a> | <a title=”Send this page to Facebook” href=”http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u={Permalink}&t={Title}” target=”_blank”>Share on Facebook</a> | <a class=”DiggThisButton” href=”http://digg.com/submit?url={Permalink}”>Digg</a> |
<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url={Permalink}&title={Title}”>Del.icio.us</a> | <a href=”mailto:?subject={Title}&body=I thought you might find this article interesting – {Title} | {Permalink}”>Email</a>

* Make Sure you change the “@twitterusername” in the code to whatever your twitter username is.

4. Hit the: “Save, I’m done” button and you should be all good.

This is how the completed code should look:

<p>
{Body}
<a title=”Send this page to Twitter!” href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=RT @”twitterusername” {Title} {Permalink}” target=”_blank”>Tweet This!</a> | <a title=”Send this page to Facebook” href=”http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u={Permalink}&t={Title}” target=”_blank”>Share on Facebook</a> | <a class=”DiggThisButton” href=”http://digg.com/submit?url={Permalink}”>Digg</a> |
<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url={Permalink}&title={Title}”>Del.icio.us</a> | <a href=”mailto:?subject={Title}&body=I thought you might find this article interesting – {Title} | {Permalink}”>Email</a>
</p>

I’m sure you could add more links but these are the only ones I was interested in. Also, if you want image links instead of text link just add the appropriate HTML image code – I just preferred text, flows better.

You can view this code in action on my posterous blog here: Hector’s Posterous