Adding Social Bookmarking to Community Server 2007
Community Server is the platform that powers rich blogging, discussions, and sharing web communities. It is widely used by IT Professionals for personal blogs. mystyleit.com for example is powered by Community Server.
This guide will summarize how to add Social Bookmarking to Community Server using the CS module developed by Christopher Even of sharepointsearch.com.
Here is the link to Christopher's original post:
http://sharepointsearch.com/cs/blogs/site_admin/archive/2007/09/15/adding-refer-digg-technorati-links-to-community-server-blogs.aspx
Installing the Module
Christopher Even has published module for download. The module can be found here:
http://sharepointsearch.com/cs/blogs/site_admin/attachment/2349.ashx
Download the file and extract the DLL from the ZIP file and copy it your Community Server's \bin folder.
Next, you will need to make an entry for the module in your CommunityServer.config file. To do this, add the following line to CommuntyServer.config at the end of the CSModules element. Around line 1078.
<add name = "SPWReferItModule" type = "SPWorks.CS.Freeware.SPWReferIt,SPWorks.CS.Freeware" ReferLinks="template" />
Take notice of template variable, this will come up later.
Configuring the Module
If you can follow the code is Chris's module, you'll see that the module pulls a template string from the CommunityServer.config and then does the following:
- Replaces all pre-defined tags in the template string with page specific values
- Writes out the string at the end of your blog posts
Originally Chris intended for users of his module to create their custom social bookmarking links for their blogs. But there are several ways to create the links. I'll cover the three options I see.
Intended Use
Chris's intended use was for users of his module to configure their own links using his pre-defined tags.
For example, here are links for del.icio.us and digg:
<!-- del.icio.us -->
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[URL_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]" mce_href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[URL_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]">Del.icio.us< /a>
<!-- digg -->
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=[URL_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]" mce_href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=[URL_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]">Digg It< /a>
Notice tags in the strings. The module will populate these with the correct values. You can fancy it up a bit, notice on Chris's page he has added a | between his text links.
Once you've figured out how to link to your favourite sites and created your string, you need to URL Encode it before you can plunk it in as the template variable.
You can use the following website to URL encode your string:
http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/urlencode.php
Once your done, you'll have links similar to those on Chris's blog.
Intended Use With a Twist
In another follow up post it was pointed out by David Leibowitz of jetlounge.net that these are just links and there is no reason these can't be icon links.
Here is the link to David's post:
http://jetlounge.net/blogs/teched/archive/2007/12/30/add-referring-icons-to-your-community-server-posts.aspx
David provide the following as an example in his post:
<!-- del.icio.us -->
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[URL_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]" mce_href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=[URL_ENCODED]&tags=[TAGS_ENCODED]&title=[TITLE_ENCODED]" target="_blank"><img class=link_icon alt="del.ico.us" src="/images/delicious.png" alt="del.ico.us" /></a>
As you can see, has simply changed link from a text link to a image link. He stores the images of his favourite social bookmarks in /images.
Besides the type of link, the procedure is exactly the same. Construct the string and URL encode with http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/urlencode.php then plunk it in as the template variable.
Once your done, you'll have links similar to those on David's blog.
Another Use
Creating the links is time consuming. Even with the pictures it still doesn't' look great.
Because Chris's module just writes out whatever is in the template variable, you can basically plunk in whatever you want in there. This bring us my use of Chris' module.
I choose to sign up for an addthis.com widget. After you sign up and get your sourcecode from them, all you need do is URL encode using http://www.albionresearch.com/misc/urlencode.php and use the result as the template variable. The advantage of an addthis.com widget is that addthis.com tracks if people are actually clicking the buttons. Something the previous don't offer. The disadvantage is sometimes it can take a while to load.
I think the result looks a lot better. I believe you could use the module to deploy any social widget you wanted, like the digg widget.
Hope you enjoyed my guide.