How to Add the Google +1 Button to WordPress With the Digg Digg Plugin

Digg Digg, recently added the Google +1 Button to the long list of buttons it already supports.  It took me about 20 seconds to turn on.  Eazy fo’ sheezy. Not only does Digg Digg enable a huge variety of share buttons, including Google +1, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc, it’s also incredibly customizable, letting you pick the type, size, pages, and placement of buttons throughout your site.  Perfect for lazy-but-anal folks like me. So how do you add the Google +1 button to WordPress? Here’s what I did, though there are plenty of customizable options in Digg Digg, as well as plenty of other plugins that attempt to offer similar functionality:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, under “Plugins”, click on “Add New”.
2. Do a search for “Digg Digg”.  Download and install the plugin.
3. Click on “Enable Normal Display”.
4. Select “Horizontal” to display the Google share button (and other share buttons) horizontally.  (Selecting “vertical” will stack them, which can add a lot of white space under your posts.)
5. Select the page types you want the share the button in.  (Might as well select all of ’em.)
6. In the next question, include “All”, exclude nothing.  (I’m not quite sure what that does, and I don’t particularly care.)
7. Check the box that let’s Digg Digg modify your post excerpt.  (Recommended.)
8. Now the fun part.  “Turn on” the Google share button (and others you’d like to use) by selecting an “integration type” for it.  (I chose “before_content” for the Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1 buttons.)
9. Pick a button size for each.  (I went with “compact” for each, and “compact 20px” for the Google button.)
10. Leave everything else, and click on “Save Changes”.

That’s it.  You’re now part of the hip “early adopter” crowd that’s using Google +1.  (Well, actually, you’re a little late.  Google +1 is already on more widespread that Twitter’s Tweet button.)  You can get pretty fancy with Digg Digg, and play with it’s “floating” functionality, or dive under the hood for deep customization.  Enjoy.]]>