Twitter Bookmark Code Integration

There are many different bookmarks scripts to create twitter bookmarks and other social networking sites bookmarks addThis.com is a popular one seen on many websites using simple to install javascript snippit of code to create drop down bookmarks for many sites including twitter, facebook, digit, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon to name just a few.

What if you just want to add a simple non-javascipt twitter bookmark to a page on your website or inside the text of a blog entry? How easy is it to put twitter bookmark code into a web page using a simple hyperlink?

Adding a twitter bookmark could not be easier.

A bookmark to twitter and other social networking sites can be added to a page as easy as adding a hyperlink to any other page. There are three sections to adding a twitter bookmark.

1. The url to twitter
2. The message and link details
3. Complete the link with a title for SEO

1. <a href="http://www.twitter.com/home?status=
2. Currently+reading+http://www.searchlast.co.uk/blog/"
3. title="Post me to Twitter">Post to Twitter</a>

As a complete link this would look similar to the following:

<a href="http://www.twitter.com/home?status=Currently
+reading+http://www.searchlast.co.uk/blog/" title="Post me
to Twitter">Post to Twitter</a>

This would show in a url as Post to Twitter (a target=”blank” has been added to this url so that it would open up in a new window.

What does this twitter bookmark Example Mean?

The first line is the url to twitter which tells twitter to run the status= command which starts to enter the text following into the What are you doing? box

The next line is the important section which is the same as if you had typed the message yourself with one Major Difference. As we are passing this information as a url, we can not uses spaces. Instead we use a + sign, this is the equivalent to encoding a space within a url.

To finish the link we add a title (for seo purpose and also to show when hovering over the link) and the text that we want to show for the link

That is an easy way to put a javascript free twitter bookmark onto a webpage or blog entry

Help The URL is too big !!

Unfortunately, url length can be a problem especially when we only have 140 characters to work with. The answer is therefore to convert your url to a smaller size using a redirection tool similar to bit.ly url shortening tool with this you simply type in the full url to your page in the box and click on the shorten button. A much shorter url is then returned for you to use.

If we use the example of http://www.searchlast.co.uk/blog/ This can be shortened to http://bit.ly/1Z9Xuq but will still ultimately bring up the same page (try it both pages will open in a new window)

Other Social Network Bookmarks

Obviously this type of bookmark is not ideal for everyone and using ready made javascript buttons like addThis will always be better as they are kept upto date with any url and browsers changes, but if you want a twitter bookmark in a simple form, then hopefully this article will be of use.

Other useful bookmark urls would be

del.icio.us
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.searchlast.
co.uk/blog/&title=Product+Price+Comparison+and+E-commerce
+News+Blog" >Del.icio.us</a>

Digg
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=http://www.searchlast.
co.uk/blog/&title=Product+Price+Comparison+and+E-commerce
+News+Blog" >Digg.com</a>

Reddit
<a href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.searchlast.
co.uk/blog/&title=Product+Price+Comparison+and+E-commerce+
News+Blog" >Reddit.com</a>

Facebook
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www.
searchlast.co.uk/blog/">Facebook.com</a>

StumbleUpon
<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://www.
searchlast.co.uk/blog/&title=Product+Price+Comparison+and
+E-commerce+News+Blog" >StumbleUpon.com</a>

Twitter
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/home?status=Currently+reading
+http://www.searchlast.co.uk/blog/" >Twitter.com</a>

Top it off with image links rather than Text ones The following social bookmark button are created in exactly the same way but with images rather than text links

Is a url wrong?

This article hopefully will be helpful but we can not guarantee that these links will be valid when you read this article so it has to be offerred without any warranties either expressed or implied, it is solely there as an example to set you on the right path.

If you have found any errors or you would like to suggest other methods then please feel free to leave your comments.