‘Share on Twitter’ link

Posted on January 20th, 2009 in code tidbits, twitter

Ever wanted to give your readers, or your client’s readers a chance to share the post quickly on Twitter?

The code is straight forward:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading http://www.test.com/post-url” title=”Click to share this post on Twitter”>Share on Twitter</a>

If you’re using Wordpress and want to automate this, simply use the following to insert the link to the current post in the loop into your link:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Currently reading <?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”Click to share this post on Twitter”>Share on Twitter</a>

If you enjoyed this post:

Please take the time to leave a comment with any of your thoughts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my RSS Feed for automatic updates on all future posts.

There are 53 responses to this post so far

• 
  Thang wrote:

  That’s great!

  # June 1st, 2009 at 9:23am

• 
  Clint wrote:

  I’m trying to manually add the social networking sites that we want to my company site and I’m not having any luck with your Twitter code.

  I’ve tried using a URL encoder for the href because I thought the spaces were the problem, but still no luck.

  Does this code still work?

  Many thanks,
  Clint

  # June 3rd, 2009 at 8:38am

• 
  Mohammed wrote:

  Thanks Jamie,
  I was looking to do this for a client and spend some time chasing the link till i got your good example.
  ?status= was the key.
  Thank you

  # June 16th, 2009 at 8:22pm

• 
  Pange wrote:

  @Clint: I think the problem is because of the quotation marks. Change the fancyquotes to simple keyboard “s and the code works fine. Huzzah!

  # June 23rd, 2009 at 2:26am

• 
  Genner Puello wrote:

  This was just the answer what i was looking for. Thanks Jamie, you’re a legend!

  # June 27th, 2009 at 2:39pm

• 
  Simona wrote:

  Thank you!! Finally I found a site with a code that does what I’m looking for and it owrks!!
  Great!!

  # June 27th, 2009 at 10:13pm

• 
  Steven wrote:

  Thank you!! It’s a pain tracking down all the different variations of code for the plethora of social bookmark sites.

  Btw–nice uber clean site Jamie.

  # July 1st, 2009 at 6:42am

• 
  Amer Schap wrote:

  Thanks for the great sample. It took me some time to find this.

  # July 3rd, 2009 at 11:32am

• 
  Ty Dubcomm wrote:

  awesome! thanks!

  now, what about the same functionality for Facebook?!

  # July 14th, 2009 at 1:17am

• 
  Karen Wirsig wrote:

  I am guest-hosting a blog this week and just added the code, with slight modification, and it works great. Thanks!

  # July 23rd, 2009 at 7:58pm

• 
  st3fan wrote:

  What about url enconding? Would Twitter decode it if I decide to URL encoded it?
  If I´d like to post a link or plain text containing “?” and “&” for example.

  Ty Dubcomm, you can find more info about sharing links on Facebook here; http://www.facebook.com/share_partners.php

  # August 7th, 2009 at 2:23pm

• 
  Pete wrote:

  Code works…but you need to change the quotation marks! Thanks

  # August 13th, 2009 at 5:30pm

• 
  Jamie Huskisson wrote:

  The quotation marks look fine Pete. What is it you’re seeing wrong with them?

  # August 13th, 2009 at 10:05pm

• 
  Andreas wrote:

  Excellent – I was looking all nite for a solution like that. You made my day!

  # August 18th, 2009 at 10:20pm

• 
  Cómo crear un enlace para enviar a twitter [Enlace] | Libro de Apuntes wrote:

  [...] Vía ‘Share on Twitter’ link [...]

  # August 19th, 2009 at 2:30pm

• 
  room34 wrote:

  Short and sweet. Thanks!

  # August 20th, 2009 at 1:44pm

• 
  room34 wrote:

  A couple more things I just thought of as I was implementing this (less short and sweet, unfortunately):

  Regarding the problem of quotation marks, as Pange noted — WordPress automatically turns regular quotation marks in a post into smart quotes, and that’s what’s happening here. If someone (i.e. me) copies the code from your post above, they’ll need to change the smart quotes into straight quotes in their text editor before using the code.

  The other thing is the link itself, in the WordPress sample. You certainly can use the_permalink() but if your URLs have query strings in them, things can get messy. In my own little snippet of “share this” code (that I have been meaning to turn into a full-fledged WordPress plugin), I have taken to using the following instead: echo rawurlencode(trackback_url(false))

  I haven’t really investigated the difference between trackback URLs and permalinks in WordPress — maybe they’re the same. But I like getting trackbacks when people link to my content. The important thing here though is the rawurlencode() function — it’ll handle the query-string-within-a-query-string problem.

  And finally (since I can’t seem to shut up), it is probably a good idea to put %20 in place of the spaces in “Currently reading” in the URL. Alternately, you could just go with rawurlencode('Currently reading ' . trackback_url(false)) and let PHP handle that.

  # August 20th, 2009 at 1:54pm

• 
  Jamie Huskisson wrote:

  Thanks for the feedback room34. I’ll likely take a look at this post and re-organise it to work in a solution that bares in mind query strings in the URLs and the like :)

  # August 20th, 2009 at 1:59pm

• 
  Megan502 wrote:

  does this string work for e-mail as well? I need to add a “share this on twitter” to a marketing email

  # August 20th, 2009 at 8:35pm

• 
  Jamie Huskisson wrote:

  Megan502 – it certainly does. Just make sure to copy and paste it into your browser first to check that it works before putting inside your e-mail as a link.

  # August 20th, 2009 at 10:27pm

• 
  Jason wrote:

  Thanks. I looked around and could not easily find this anywhere else.

  # August 28th, 2009 at 4:02pm

• 
  Perr wrote:

  It works for me ~ Thank you so much!

  # September 2nd, 2009 at 5:15am

• 
  Tracey wrote:

  Very helpful. Exactly what I was looking for and worked right away.
  Whew! Thanks!

  # September 19th, 2009 at 2:28am

• 
  susanna wrote:

  Hi, I might be an idiot, but I don’t know what this means: …. insert the link to the current post in the loop into your link… :-/ I am sorry.

  When I add the code to wordpress it just shows up as code…this is what shows up on the post:
  ” title=”Click to share this post on Twitter”>Share on Twitter

  Anyone a suggestion?
  thanks Susanna

  # September 24th, 2009 at 10:34pm

• 
  Andrew wrote:

  when I have a link with # it doesn’t post anything after the #. How does one get around this?

  # September 27th, 2009 at 11:30pm

• 
  Maragues wrote:

  Beware using url special characters such as ‘%’, it wonk work unless you encode it.

  Using urlencode(‘50%’) will do the work in php.

  # October 7th, 2009 at 10:56am

• 
  Johannes Leuchovius wrote:

  Thanks :)

  # October 12th, 2009 at 9:51am

• 
  Diana wrote:

  Thank you so much! This is just what I was looking for. Here’s a small modification I made to the code to make sure it opens in a new window:

  
<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=I´m reading" title="Talk about it on Twitter" target="_blank">Share this on Twitter</a>


  # November 1st, 2009 at 5:03pm

• 
  eTc :: El blog de Marketing en Español » Blog Archive » Pinceladas sociales: ¿Cómo adaptar tu site a la web social? wrote:

  [...] específicos que sirven también para medir el número de veces se ha distribuido ese contenido: compartir en Twitter y compartir en [...]

  # November 2nd, 2009 at 3:28pm

• 
  rabbit wrote:

  Hi, Where can i get the small twitter icon to put in this link in an tag?
  thanks in advance!

  # November 4th, 2009 at 6:07pm

• 
  caksyam wrote:

  Thanks for sharing! This is an awesome post.

  # November 5th, 2009 at 5:31pm

• 
  catch_down (catch_down) wrote:

  http://tinyurl.com/ddwvfe
  ‘Share on Twitter’ link : Jamie Huskisson Blog

  # November 5th, 2009 at 7:47pm

• 
  Bob wrote:

  How do I pass special characters like ?, , !, and & ????

  Thank you!!!

  # November 8th, 2009 at 5:30am

• 
  Os wrote:

  Thank you so much for this code; i like the straight-forward implementation and explanation.

  # November 12th, 2009 at 2:39pm

• 
  senn wrote:

  Thanks for the solution, just what I’m looking for. :)

  # November 19th, 2009 at 1:54am

• 
  keither wrote:

  Thanks so much your post :)

  # November 26th, 2009 at 9:11am

• 
  Petzume wrote:

  Thanks, this is great. I did have to change the quotation marks, but besides that it works.

  # December 11th, 2009 at 9:53pm

• 
  PERANTARA (PERANTARADOTNET) wrote:

  how to share a page on twitter … http://www.jhuskisson.com/code-tidbits/share-on-twitter-link

  # December 13th, 2009 at 10:56pm

• 
  Sarah Lewis wrote:

  Thanks for the tip. It’s simple, but I can never remember the syntax right off the top of my head. :)

  # December 22nd, 2009 at 12:27am

• 
  flakey wrote:

  Your link contains syntax errors. I mean, you are supposed to encode URLs when you use them as parameters within a URL, and also spaces. The correct url for your link would be:
  Currently+reading+http%3a%2f%2fwww.test.com%2fpost-url

  It’s pretty picky of me but using a title attribute for a link is debatable. I can READ the link text, I don’t need a nagging title when I hover my mouse over it.

  # December 23rd, 2009 at 1:12pm

• 
  Tushar Mahajan wrote:

  Thank’s A Lot
  It Really Helpfull

  # January 4th, 2010 at 8:29am

• 
  @Up_in_Smoke wrote:

  I also changed the quotation marks only , from what was proffered to the standard quotation marks on my Mac,,,,and it suddenly started working…Should point out that I use Blogger…..Thanks…Mark

  # January 4th, 2010 at 7:32pm

• 
  @Up_in_Smoke wrote:

  And Thanks Diana…I saw your post on the simple MOD to make this open in a new window…Worked perfectly…and you already changed the Quotation Marks…Brilliant

  Share this on Twitter

  Still only using this on Blogger…pasted into body section after section…expand widget code must be expanded

  # January 4th, 2010 at 7:42pm

• 
  Jimmy Corn wrote:

  Wicked, worked straight away! ACE STUFF

  # January 9th, 2010 at 1:47am

• 
  Noel wrote:

  Thanks so much, adding to our blog now.

  # January 28th, 2010 at 10:51pm

• 
  FranRood (Francesca Rood) wrote:

  @emmybabee yea that did not work i dunna this says how to thoughhttp://www.jhuskisson.com/code-tidbits/share-on-twitter-link

  # January 30th, 2010 at 10:59pm

• 
  TheCosmonaut wrote:

  Thanks much – worked like a charm!

  # February 6th, 2010 at 12:03am

• 
  siraj wrote:

  Thanks bro :D

  # February 19th, 2010 at 12:43pm

• 
  Laurie Buchanan wrote:

  thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!

  # February 20th, 2010 at 2:18am

• 
  Jennie wrote:

  So simple and so helpful! Thanks very much :)

  # February 22nd, 2010 at 7:09pm

• 
  Pino wrote:

  Thanks, very very much. Short and complete.

  # February 24th, 2010 at 10:40pm

• 
  Mike Fisher wrote:

  what about the URL-shortener? how can I plug this into the link?

  # March 4th, 2010 at 10:24am

• 
  Lois wrote:

  Other sites make this seem complicated. Thank you for the straightforward solution!

  # March 5th, 2010 at 11:25pm

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