POST UPDATED! – We now not only have Google Buzz with their own button, but, now Facebook has launched their own finally. In this post I will show you how to add the Facebook “Like” button your Pligg install.

Open link_summary.tpl:

Determine where you want the button to appear, make sure you allow enough space, at least 300px, as the button will show not only a “Like” button but who has liked it as well.

Once you have determined the right location add the following code:

Special thanks to Ruhani Rabin for the original code.

UPDATE:

One of our readers, Giuseppe Dispensa asked if it was possible to the “Like” when posted to Facebook, link to the story page as opposed to the URL of the submission. At first we didn’t think of this, but, if you would like to send the traffic to you first and then the submissio URL change the following part of the code:

to:

make sure you enter your domain name where we have YOURDOMAINNAME.

Have fun, what method will you be using?

We had the pleasure of meeting Stuart Duff, the brains behind the new Pligg-Template.com, not too long ago, so we thought we would do a small interview with him and introduce him the Pligg community.

Pliggs – Who runs/owns Pligg-Template
Stuart – Hi my name is Stuart Duff, Pligg Template is run and operated by my myself. We wanted to create a template provider for pligg that is transparent, dedicated and crucially one that provides great support which we think pligg templates have been lacking until now. We manage to purchase the domain name in September 0f 2009 and worked on our plans for launch in January 2010, taking a deserved break for the festive period of course.

Prior to starting Pligg Template we have done design work for clients using Wordpress, Drupal and Pligg, our favoured CMS of choice when creating designs in the past has been wordpress and we have already built a successful web design business based around that system.

Pliggs – How many people are using your video template?
Stuart – The PliggTube Template has only been available for under a week at the moment, so far however sales figures look promising and already it has seen some cool updates happen to it.

Pliggs – Do you have future templates planned, if so how soon and how many?
Stuart – We certainly do and also so much more than templates in the works. As we mentioned we come from a wordpress background so we want to bring some of those premium goodness template features to Pligg.

We don’t have a static release schedule for template’s we develop and release templates when they’re ready approach could describe it best. This allows us to test template and not be pushed into rushing things along to meet an announced release date, it also why we provide individual sales and support rather than a template club approach. We see it being and exciting journey over the next few months

Pliggs – Do you do custom work?
Stuart – At Pligg Template the answer would be no. We want to concentrate on designing and releasing some cool templates, for us to take on custom work we feel it would take time away from designing new pligg templates and more expensive to us cut into our support time.

Pliggs – What Pligg projects do you run?
Stuart – We don’t run any at the moment; we simply don’t have enough hours in the day to design templates, work on new ideas, provide support and enjoy some downtime. We are however well versed with the system overall.

Pliggs – As a whole how do you find the Pligg code to work with?
Stuart – Not bad actually and since v1.0 it seems to be easy enough to work with and pretty much stable. Also every template or module we make is developed via SVN so updating is fairly easy as is general maintenance.

Pliggs – Did you use Pligg prior to v1.0 release?
Stuart – Yes think we first used it around v.9.7 or thereabouts.

Pliggs – Can you give an example of a Pligg site you think has been well done?
Stuart – To be honest there aren’t too many that initially spring to mind http://tipd.com is clean simple and functional though and probably my favourite.

Pligg-Template.com is home to the fantastic Pligg template PliggDZine and PliggTube. They also have an affiliate program for site owners, you can sign up here.

You can catch of Stuart over at his blog, at WPScoop and on Twitter.

What do you think of the themes released by Pligg-Template.com.

What’s the biggest annoyance with running a Pligg install? Dealing with SPAM. This is unique to Pligg, but because of the type of site that Pligg enables you to run, SPAMMERS love to abuse it.

Most SPAM is submitted via a script, therefore, making it super easy for SPAMMERS to riddle every Pligg install they find with their garbage. If you are like me, I spend about 3 hours a day removing SPAM from FAQPAL, that’s time I would rather spend doing almost anything else.

I have compiled a list of 1787 domain names that have been blacklisted for SPAM.

Many new Pligg owners aren’t aware that Pligg has a feature built in where you can have the script check the domain being domain to see if it has been blacklisted, if it has been, the submitter won’t be able to complete the submission.

All Pligg site should be using this feature.

Admin – Configure – Anti-spam – Enable spam checking (set this to true)

The file that lists all sites you blacklist is located in the root folder of your Pligg install and is called local-antispam.txt.

To add a site to the list, you can manually open the file and add the URL or you can have it added by clicking the ban link in the story admin panel.

To get you started, here is the list of sites I have compiled.

I am currently testing a new way to get your traffic to links posted on your Pligg install noticed better.

Most bloggers use Google Analytics, as it is by far the best FREE analytics service today.

Google Analytics uses a UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) tag so users can add information to the end of their links so they know better where their traffic is coming from. This is typically used for tracking banner ads or text links, but it can be used for cases.

Why not add it the links added to your Pligg install?

To add it, simply open link_summary.tpl:

and change it to,

This will change the normal outbound link:

http://www.shoutmeloud.com/10-best-way-to-check-your-internet-speed.html

to

http://www.shoutmeloud.com/10-best-way-to-check-your-internet-speed.html?utm_source=YOURDOMAIN.com

In the Analytic panel for that site, if they use Google, they will see your Pligg install listed as a traffic referral much easier.

I have only been using this method for a week, so I am not sure if it will help with getting more traffic or not, but I will do a followup post in a week or two.

What do you think of the idea?

In this tutorial I will show you how to start integrating your Wordpress blog into your Pligg install by displaying your recent blog posts in your Pligg sidebar.

One way to add to your Pligg install is to add a Wordpress blog. The blog can be used for promoting certain site features, posting top 10 lists or posting site news. A blog is a great way to increase your site’s traffic and exposure.

I added a Wordpress blog to FAQPAL a couple of months ago and it has certainly helped.

One way to integrate the blog is to display your recent blog posts in the Pligg sidebar, this will again add to your blog traffic and ultimately your Pligg install traffic.

In order to do this, you will need to download the latest version of Simplepie, once downloaded, unzip it, and upload it to your 3rdparty folder. It will take approximately 5 minutes to upload, as it is a huge folder.

Now in order to make this work, you must choose a .php file to add the following code, I have used sidebar_stories_u.php (using v9.9.5) and added it to the bottom.

In Wistie open libs/sidebarstories.php, add to the bottom:

In the above code, make sure you change the domain to match yours, as well make sure the path to your blog is correct.

The code above will display “5″ of your recent entries, which you can change by altering:

$max_items = 5;

it will also display the excerpt for the each blog post, author name and date. I chose to only display the title, so you can remove the following:

That’s it. This module will work on both v9.9.5 and the latest Pligg build. You will need to do whatever styling you want in order to blend it in with the rest of your site.

You can see a working example on FAQPAL, check out the blog as well.

As always, any issues leave me a comment below.

Will you be using this on your Pligg install?

In this tutorial I will show you how easy it is to add a screenshot to each submission just like Digg.

There are only 2 files to edit for this hack, link_summary.tpl and style.css.

Open link_summary.tpl and find:

change it to:

Save.

Open style.css and add anywhere:


.storythumb {
float:right;
border: 1px solid #b7cce0;
padding: 3px;
}


That’s it, I have websnapr as default screenshot supplier, though I always recommend using Shrink the Web.

You can see a demo over at Web Link Depot.

As always, post your thoughts and questions below.

You can also follow me on Twitter, where I will always help one on one.

In this tutorial I will show you how to have your stories sent to the published page automatically Tweeted to Twitter using whatever Twitter account you want.

I have already shown you how to use Twitterfeed and Bit.ly to auto publish your published submissions, now lets cut out the middleman, Twitterfeed.

The following code was sent to us by Jorge from the good folks at Bierzeame.

Open your libs/link.php file and find:
function publish() {
if(!$this->read) $this->read_basic();
$this->published_date = time();

$this->status = 'published';
$this->store_basic();
}
change it to:
function publish() {
if(!$this->read) $this->read_basic();
$this->published_date = time();

$this->status = 'published';
$this->twitter();
$this->store_basic();
}
find:

function username() {
just before it add:
function twitter(){
global $db;

return true;
}
}
Save.

That’s it. Now every story that is sent to the published page will auto Tweet, giving your members another reason to submit.

Make sure you edit your Twitter login details and your Bit.ly details.

It will shorten the submission URL using Bit.ly and send the user when clicked on Twitter to your story page. This will also track how many clicks each one gets which you can check when you login to Bit.ly.

In this tutorial I will show you how to add the popular Wordpress plugin SexyBookmarks to your Pligg install, adding that extra something to your story pages.

Sexy Bookmarks which I first saw used on a Wordpress blog is one of the best methods to ask your users to share something on social networking sites. It uses the power of jQuery for that added flair.

My good friend Brian over at Blog Engage managed to get his site added to Sexy Bookmarks and I will soon be attempting to have one of my own sites added, so I thought I would try to use it on a test Pligg.

Luckily, I came across a post by Naeem Noor over at CSS Reflex where he had successfully added it to Blogger using 3 chunks of code.

For this tutorial I simply took what Naeem used and adapted it to work in Pligg.

Open pligg.tpl:

add the following just before the closing head tag:

Save.

add the following anywhere you want the buttons to appear:

Save.

I added them just before:

in the wistie template for the latest build of Pligg.

There are 2 images for this work as well, download them and upload to your images directory.

In the chunk of code you added to link_summary.tpl, the images are called, you will need to edit those 2 lines for the location of the images for your site.

I have them working on test Pligg site at Weblink Depot

Again, a big thanks to Josh at Sexy Bookmarks for creating it in the first place, and to Naeem Noor for giving me a starting place.

And finally, big congrats to Brian at Blog Engage on this milestone, make sure you check out his site.

In this post, we look at a simple tool to help monitor all of your backlinks, which is especially good for links you have purchased, and it also lets you make sure those links stay.

There a few things that all websites need in order to succeed, one of those things are backlinks. Backlinks create a source of traffic and can also help with increasing your Google Pagerank.

You can acquire backlinks naturally, or by purchasing them. In order to acquire natural backlinks, you will need to write some killer content or by using linkbait, and then just wait until people link to that content. The other way is by purchasing banner spots or text link ads, this way typically will show results a lot quicker, but it can get costly.

One issue with backlinks is keeping track of them and ensuring they stay active. While there are tools out there that can help you find backlinks to your site, there is only one that monitor backlinks for you, and did I mention it is FREE.

Backlink Monitor

One of the other advantages of this tool, is it helps you determine which keywords you are getting links for, this as you know is key for search engine placement.

Since this service is FREE, they require a link to them on your site.

Give it a try, it’s FREE.

Back in May I showed you how to display a thumbshot of the story submitted using a jQuery hover, now, let’s make it better by only using CSS.

Why not use jQuery? By itself, there is no reason.  However, removing the need for it will cut down on load time.

Another issue with Pligg and jQuery is they do not always get along.  There are too many conflicts with the scriptaculous effects and prototype, which does not like jQuery.

The following is so simple, there is no reason not to use it.

Open, link_summary.tpl and find:

change to:

Save.

Open your main CSS file and add:

Save.

You can change the image provider to whatever you like, I personally use Shrink the Web, as they seem to be the quickest.

This method will show the thumbshot immediately upon hover of the story title, the previous method, had a time delay.

Would love your opinion, leave me a comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter, where I will always help one on one.

You can see it in action at FAQPAL.