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WordPress: How to add Google +1 Button to WordPress blog post

    Adding the Google +1 button to blog posts allows readers to recommend the content on Google Search and share it on Google+. In this article I’m going to explain how to add +1 buttons to the WordPress blog based on iNove theme.

Google provides with a special online tool allowing to generate the code you need to add into blog pages. Choosing different options, you can customize look and behavior of the +1 button you are about to add. For example, I’ve chosen asynchronous inclusion, which allows page to continue loading while browser fetches the +1 JavaScript. So, I’ve got the following code:

<!-- Place this tag where you want the +1 button to render -->
<g:plusone href="put some url here"></g:plusone>

<!-- Place this render call where appropriate -->
<script type="text/javascript">
  (function() {
    var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
    po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
  })();
</script>

Google +1 button can be virtually divided into two parts: the button itself and a Share bubble. After +1‘ing a blog post, the reader will be able to share the page in Google+ social network through the surfaced Share bubble.

Share bubble

The share bubble contains, so called, +Snippet, which comprises the title and brief description of the page referenced by the +1 button‘s href attribute. In theory, the title and description are automatically extracted by the +1 JavaScript. To keep these pieces of data consistent, we are able to let the +1 JavaScript know what html-nodes exactly should be used to get the right title and description. The same online tool helps to customize +Snippet. For my needs, I’ve got the following markup:

<!-- Update your html tag to include the itemscope and itemtype attributes -->
<html itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Blog">

<!-- Add the following three tags to your body -->
<span itemprop="name">Title of your content</span>
<span itemprop="description">This would be a description of the content your users are sharing</span>

Looking ahead, I’d like to note that the most important in the above markup is the attributes, but not the html-tags containing them. I mean the attributes can be applied to different html-tags with the same effect.

Ok, let’s add two +1 buttons to every single post page as it’s shown on the picture below: the small sized button at the beginning of the post content and the standard sized one right after it.

Single Blog Post with two +1 buttons

For that, first of all, you need to alter the single.php file (wp-content/themes/inove/single.php).

  1. Find the line, where the blog post title is being rendered:
    <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
    

    and alter it to the following:

    <h2 itemprop="name"><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
    

    The modification signifies the title for +Snippet will be extracted from the given h2-tag.

  2. Find the line, where the post author is being added to the response stream:
    <?php if ($options['author']) : ?><span class="author"><?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></span><?php endif; ?>
    

    insert the following code after that line:

    <!-- Google +1 code has begun -->  
    <span style="float:left; padding-left:10px;">
        <g:plusone size="small" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"></g:plusone>
    </span>
    <!-- Google +1 code has ended -->
    

    The small sized +1 button will appear at the beginning of every blog post. Note that, in the listed above code, the the_permalink() function returns the url of the current blog post. This url is used to set the href attribute, which explicitly defines the +1 target URL.

  3. Find the div-tag containing content of the post:
    <div class="content">
        <?php the_content(); ?>
        <div class="fixed"></div>
    </div>
    

    You can mark the div-tag as a source for the brief description in +Snippet using the itemprop=”description” attribute:

    <div itemprop="description" class="content">
        <?php the_content(); ?>
        <div class="fixed"></div>
    </div>
    

    But there is a pitfall here. The +1 JavaScript seems to transform the extracted text, removing html-tags and so on. In my case, after the transformation the description isn’t very readable. So, I decided to have an empty description at all. I added the following markup line next to the found div-tag:

    <span itemprop="description" style="display:none">&nbsp;</span>
    

    The &nbsp; is required, otherwise the brief description will be formed automatically from other sources, mainly from meta-tags and so on.

  4. Insert the following code right after the content-containing div-tag you found in the previous step (or right after <span itemprop=”description”…, if you chose my approach with an empty description):
    <!-- Google +1 code has begun -->
    <div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 10px;">
        <g:plusone href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"></g:plusone>
    </div>
    <!-- Google +1 code has ended -->
    

    The standard sized +1 button will appear at the end of every blog post.

The single.php file after all modification applied is outlined below (some parts are skipped):

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php $options = get_option('inove_options'); ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : the_post(); update_post_caches($posts); ?>

	<div id="postpath">
		...
	</div>

	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
		<h2 itemprop="name"><?php the_title(); ?></h2>                
		<div class="info">
			<span class="date"><?php the_time(__('F jS, Y', 'inove')) ?></span>
			<?php if ($options['author']) : ?><span class="author"><?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></span><?php endif; ?>
                        
	                <!-- Google +1 code has begun -->  
	                <span style="float:left; padding-left:10px;">
	                    <g:plusone size="small" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"></g:plusone>
                        </span>
	                <!-- Google +1 code has ended -->

			<?php edit_post_link(__('Edit', 'inove'), '<span class="editpost">', '</span>'); ?>
			<?php if ($comments || comments_open()) : ?>
				<span class="addcomment"><a href="#respond"><?php _e('Leave a comment', 'inove'); ?></a></span>
				<span class="comments"><a href="#comments"><?php _e('Go to comments', 'inove'); ?></a></span>
			<?php endif; ?>
			<div class="fixed"></div>
		</div>
		...
		<div class="content">
			<?php the_content(); ?>
			<div class="fixed"></div>
		</div>

                <span itemprop="description" style="display:none">&nbsp;</span>
                <!-- Google +1 code has begun -->
                <div style="text-align:center; margin-bottom: 10px;">
                        <g:plusone href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"></g:plusone>
                </div>
                <!-- Google +1 code has ended -->                

		<div class="under">
			...
		</div>
	</div>
	...
	<?php include('templates/comments.php'); ?>

	<div id="postnavi">
		...
	</div>

<?php else : ?>
	<div class="errorbox">
		<?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.', 'inove'); ?>
	</div>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Ok, then let’s make some supporting changes to header.php (wp-content/themes/inove/header.php) and footer.php (wp-content/themes/inove/footer.php).

  1. Find the <body> line in the header.php and alter it to
    <body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Blog">
    

    The added attributes instruct the +1 JavaScript to extract data for +Snippet from html-nodes with the itemprop=”description” and itemprop=”name” attributes.

  2. Find the <!– content END –> line in the footer.php and insert the following JavaScript code right before it:
    <script type="text/javascript">
      (function() {
        var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
        po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
        var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
      })();
    </script>
    

    This code asynchronously includes the +1 JavaScript into the page. The included plusone.js is responsible for +1 button rendering.

The footer.php after the modification is outlined below (some parts are skipped):

	</div>
	<!-- main END -->
	...
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
  (function() {
    var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true;
    po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
  })();
</script>
<!-- content END -->

<!-- footer START -->
<div id="footer">
	...
</div>
<!-- footer END -->

</div>
<!-- container END -->
</div>
<!-- wrap END -->
...

The last step is to replace the old single.php, header.php and footer.php files with the modified ones on your web server.

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