Go ahead, try it out. The PlugIM vote box widget has been integrated and is in use with the PlugIM blog. Click the plug box to the left to see how it works.

The number one request I’ve had from the community is for a PlugIM vote box widget and after weeks in development, it has finally arrived. But this isn’t your typical vote box widget that you’re used to seeing around the web… This widget is AJAX powered. It automatically casts a vote and updates the vote count right there on your site so your visitor never needs to leave! I’m sure you’ve noticed most vote boxes require your visitor to not only leave your site, but also create an account on the bookmarking site just to be able to vote. Well not the PlugIM widget, your users don’t even need to have a PlugIM account to vote for your story! They can just click ‘plug’ and keep on browsing your site without ever leaving to go to PlugIM.

Here’s how it works. Once you’ve installed the code, the PlugIM vote box will be displayed on your site. The very first person to click it, will be directed to the submit story page on PlugIM where the URL and story title will be automatically populated. The user finishes up the submission process by setting the tags, writing a short description and selecting a category. (Note that if you use our automatic RSS feed submission feature, your stories will already be submitted and ready for voting.) Once the story has been submitted, everyone else who clicks the button will simply be casing a vote for your story. If they’re logged into PlugIM from a previous visit, the vote will be cast in their name. If they aren’t logged in, or don’t have a PlugIM account, the vote will still count and measures are in place to prevent voting abuse, so they still only get one vote.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In the code snippets below, be sure to change occurrences of “xsrc” to “src”. This was done for security reasons.

Support for 1 PlugIM button on a page:

Simply insert the following code where you want the button:

<script xsrc="http://www.plugim.com/tools/plugthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

This creates a button that when clicked, uses the URL and Title of the page it’s on to submit the story. If you’re page title is extremely long, and you want to change it (for example, maybe the default page title on your site includes the domain name and a subtitle before the actual story title) you can do so by including the title variable like this:

Support for changing the story title:

<script type="text/javascript">
plugim_title = 'Title of Your Story';
</script>
<script xsrc="http://www.plugim.com/tools/plugthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

(Note: once a story has been submitted, changing the title variable will not change the title of the story on PlugIM.)

Support for multiple buttons on the same page:

If you need multiple PlugIM buttons on the same webpage (on the homepage of a blog for example, where you want to have one PlugIM button for each story) you can do so by including the PlugIM URL and Title variables:

<script type="text/javascript">
plugim_url = 'http://www.YourStoryURL.com';
plugim_title = 'Title of Your Story';
</script>
<script xsrc="http://www.plugim.com/tools/plugthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Note in this example, the URL and Title variables are required. Otherwise every button on your page will point to the same story on PlugIM. In the example of a blog, simply use the permalink URL for each post.

WordPress Plugin

We realize the widget requires some technical knowledge to install, which is why we also have a WordPress plugin available developed by Michelle MacPhearson. If you have a WordPress blog, simply download the plugin from her site, upload it to your blog and activate it. Then all your posts will automatically have the PlugIM vote box ready for your readers to vote. You can download the plugin here:

http://blog.michellemacphearson.com/wordpress-plugin-plugim-votebox/

The widget has been tested with IE6, IE7 and Firefox 1.5. If you find any issues, please reply to this post so we can clear them up.