I’ve been meaning to write something bloggy for a while now. I’m by no means a technical genius but I’m constantly looking for easy ways to make my blog that little bit better - you have to move with the times and all that. Well I’ve stumbled upon a neat little trick I thought I’d share with you.

You might have noticed that if you hover over any of my blog post images, a Pin It button appears. It’s discreet, easy to do, and probably completely useless but I like it. I’m constantly reading about crafty ideas to do with Dexter when he’s a little bit older, or seeing gorgeous photos that I’d like to recall at some point - this is an easy way of gathering them all in one place.

Want one? Well here’s how get it!

If you’ve got a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can use the Pinterest Pin It Button For Images plugin.

1. Simply download the zip file, head to your WordPress Dashboard, click Plugins > Add New > Upload and upload the zip file!
2. Activate the plugin, then from your WordPress Dashboard, go to Settings > Pinterest Pin It.
3. Under the heading Show “Pin It” button on following pages, click All Pages. Click Save.

That’s it! Just like mine, every time you hover over one of your images, the little icon appears. Clicking on it will automatically bring up the ‘create a pin’ box so you can upload to your Pinterest profile.

Want to know more? Well here’s a rundown of some of the key features:

It autofills the description of the pin using your blog post title

I’m currently displaying the default button so you can see what the hell I’m going on about! Customising it is relatively easy however and there’s a whole host of pretty buttons to choose from.

Not only that, you can play with the size of the button and specify where exactly you’d like for it to appear when you hover over the image. This is slightly more tricky but the best tutorial I’ve come across is here.

You can opt out for certain photos

If you’re posting a less than flattering image of yourself, something a little bit sensitive (hopefully NOT uncensored pics of your children in the bath) or sharing an image you don’t have permission to Pin, you can opt out.

To do so, simply head to your WordPress Dashboard, click Settings > Pinterest Pin It > Tick the Opt Out on Single Pages Box

The box you’ll need to tick to exempt a post or page from being pinned is located from WordPress editing screen.

From WordPress Dashboard, click Posts > find the relevant post and click edit > You’ll find your opt out box on the bottom righthand side of your screen

It doesn’t interfere with badge code

We often include badges on our blogs. In a recent post regarding Matilda Mae’s Memorial Auction I included a badge that links to another blog with further information. Similarly, for most blogger comps I’ll add a badge and link it directly back to the host site. This plugin doesn’t affect this in any way - you can only pin the image if you click on the actual Pinterest button in the corner of the image. Clicking anywhere else on the image will take you through to the link you’ve specified.

I’m reliably informed this works for Blogspot and Typepad too

Here’s a tutorial for Blogspot

And another for Typepad

(I’ll admit my head is a little blown by these tutorials as I have no idea what the back-end of these platforms look like)

You don’t even need a blog!

If you’re a Pinterest addict, don’t blog yourself, but enjoy reading other people’s… then there’s additional plugin’s that will allow you to simply right click on people’s images even if they don’t have this feature installed on their blog.

Yep - in Firefox you can add the Pinterest Right-Click Plugin in seconds. This means that every time you see a piccie you like it’s a simply case of right clicking on the image.

If you use Chrome, there’s also QuickPin which looks more or less the same.

So there you have it - this might be considerably out-of-date (it appears to have been doing the rounds in the New Year) but I’ve spotted a couple of blogs I regularly read without the feature. Indeed this might be because they’ve trialled it and hated it! I think I’ll keep mine though. It’s a handy little gizmo!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!