I just installed the socialmarker.com plugin for my wordpress blog. it is cool in that it adds a handy social bookmarking at the end of each post automatically so folks can add to digg, reddit, etc. The only problem I see is, doing a 'view source code' I noticed that there is a regular href link to socialmarker.com at the end of each post, which means every page of my blog links to that site. Talk about a drain of pagerank. Does anyone here know a solution?
The plugin is just a link generator for SocialMarker, where the real action happens. There are many other bookmarking plugins that don't work that way.
Its common for developers to have a backlink in the plugins and modifications they make. Especially if its viewable by the public. Even with commercial grade scripts developers charge extra to remove the copyright and backlinks. I do not see anything wrong with what the developer did. I wonder if that link was disclosed in the terms of use that should have been included in the download? The script might be copyrighted so that you can not remove the link. If that is the case, either remove the script from your site. Or dont worry about.
Many open source, or creative commons scripts ask that you leave the link as a courtesy, or ask that if you remove it, that you do link to the creator somewhere on your site. That information can usually be found in the "read me" file, or surrounding the link itself inside the file where it is placed. I think asking for a link from every post is a bit too much, but you should link to the plug ins author out of respect. I have refrained from using many plug ins that behave similarly, and with something as common as a Social Bookmarking plug in, there are many others that you can use that are not as intrusive. A good tip is, sometimes we use those type plug ins based on the design of the icons...if you find a plug in that you like, you can easily find bookmarking icons for free, and just resize them and replace them in the plug ins images folder.
On my wordpress blog I use socializer and it's very good as you can choose what links to display and they seriously have a few hundred social bookmarking sites.
I will try those option. The thing is they had 2 versions, a javascript for regular websites (no pr lost) and another version for wordpress with with their link automatically inserted on every single page. that could get you badly penalized by google.
Nothing is free. If you don't like how they benefit from the plug in then you should try a different one.
Lbrg could use clarify the best way to use socializer, I signed up but they have other services too. thanks