Easy way to add Yahoo! Buzz buttons to your blog

Yahoo! Buzz opened its doors to a few select web publishers back when it launched in February, but today, I'm happy to report the program is now open to all U.S. publishers. Yes, that means that if you have a blog or website, you can place little "Buzz up!" buttons at the bottom of each post, and encourage your readers to vote for their favorite stories which could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your site.

Now, if you have a blog, inserting a piece of code into every post can be a cumbersome task, so here are a few ways to make your job easier at least in these two blog communities:

Wordpress: Travis Johnson created the WPBuzz plugin for Wordpress templates, and if you've worked with plugins before, then installing this button should be easy. You basically download the zip file containing the plugin, upload it to your plugins folder, and activate it the next time you access your plugins page. You can also change the way the button looks by selecting the type of button you want in the settings page. Piece of cake, no?

Blogger: Flame Shock put together a post that walks any newbie through the process of inserting code into a Blogger template. The steps are pretty easy to follow, but before you start hacking your template, make sure you create a backup in case anything goes wrong. This hack adds a Buzz Up! button to the bottom of each post.

I'm sure the folks at Six Apart will eventually create a plugin for Movable Type and Typepad soon, but in the meantime, you can add this piece of code to the bottom of your blog posts manually or by tweaking your template. If you can't figure out how to hack your template, you can also submit stories through this page.

I'll update this post if I come across any other plugins, so keep checking back.

Related:

Where the Yahoo! buzz is at

[Full disclosure: Yahoo! Tech and Yahoo! Buzz are both owned by Yahoo!]