Tweeting your WordPress just got easier

Welcome to the Tweet button.

WordPress.com has always been a great place to get free Web hosting. The only hitch: You forgo some customization possibilities that are available with your own hosted WordPress installation.

As a result, adding a useful function such as the Tweetmeme button — which makes it painless for users to tweet your blog posts — isn’t possible.

And workarounds are a bit of a chore. Perita Labs’ free social-bookmarking tool is great for posts, but you have to go through several steps to build your button menu. And you have to do each individual post by itself.

You’ve always been able to publicize your new WordPress posts on Twitter, but it’s been difficult to allow users to share your posts.

The Tweet button remedies that situation.

To access the new feature, go to the Settings menu and choose Extras.

You’ll get a list of options to choose from. Check the box with “Show a Twitter ‘Tweet Button’ on my posts.”

Yes, it’s that easy to allow users to share your prose.

UPDATE: August 24, 2010

Almost as quickly as WordPress.com launched the Tweet button, it expanded and moved its options to a new menu.

It now offers a “Share This” function, which gives readers the option to share the post on other social networks such as Facebook and Digg.

The function is now found under the Sharing selection in Settings. WordPress has created a great tutorial video:
Tutorial

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