FARK.com: FarkIt Button

What is FarkIt™?

FarkIt™ is an easy way to get news articles on your site linked to Fark.

Unlike purely social news sites, Fark is an edited social news site. Not everything submitted has a chance to reach the main page of Fark. This improves the quality of the links that appear on Fark and goes a long way to preventing spam as well. In short: social bookmarking sites are socialist democracies, Fark is a benevolent dictatorship.

Since Fark reserves final say as to what appears on the main page, FarkIt™ will allow us to balance our main page postings with what readers tell us they want to see on the main page. This way we don't overlook any truly interesting submissions.

What is Fark This?

Fark This is simply another way to refer to FarkIt™.

How does the FarkIt™ (or Fark This) button work?

We provide a few lines of code for you to plug into your pages in order to display a button on your site. This button can be labeled either FarkIt™ or Fark This, or can be one of our 'F' icons shown below. (Note: for simplicity's sake, we will be referring to this button as the "FarkIt™ button" henceforth.)

Links submitted via FarkIt™ will queue up in a new database set apart from our regular submission database. Internal processes on the administrator side of Fark will notify us when we receive a huge burst of FarkIt™ submissions. We will then inspect the submission to see if it passes muster for what we think should appear on Fark's main page.

Please note: Websites displaying the FarkIt™ button prominently will be given Fark listing preference over those that do not

This is our way of saying "Thank You" to websites that appreciate Fark traffic enough to display the FarkIt™ Button. This means that if we receive a large number of FarkIt™ submissions for a link that is already on the main page, we may replace the target URL with the FarkIt™ URL. User-submitted taglines will remain unchanged, and the original submitter of the link will retain submission credit for the link. Only the URL will change.

For example, assume there is a link to a mid-market newspaper wire-service article on the main page of Fark. This mid-market newspaper does not display the FarkIt™ button. If at any time Fark receives a number of FarkIt™ submissions from another website carrying the same wire-service article, we will switch the target of the link to site displaying the FarkIt™ button.

Again, taglines appearing on Fark will remain unchanged, only the target URL will be affected. The original link submitter will retain greenlight credit. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it. Some Fark submitters care very much about the number of greenlit articles they submit.

Summary: taglines will continue to be selected from Fark's regular queue, URLs for those same articles will be selected by volume of FarkIt™ submissions.

How to put the FarkIt™ button on your page

You can place the FarkIt™ button on your page in one of two ways - using our easy-to-install script (which includes a button image), or manually using your own image.

To use the Javascript method

First, at the top of the page in between the <head></head> tags, add this line:

 <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.fark.com/js/farkit.js"></script>

Note: Even if you have multiple stories you'd like a FarkIt button on, only put the above code in your page once.

Second, add this code at the place in the page where you actually want the button to appear:

 <script type="text/javascript">
    farkItButton("Your headline goes here", "http://your-url-goes-here/", "80x20");
  </script>

If you have multiple stories on a page, just repeat the above for each article.

That's it! Now you have a nice, shiny FarkIt button.

The size must have quotes around it, and the currently supported sizes are:

80x20 (the default)
82x20
100x20
120x40
129x32
16x16
29x40
32x32
88x30

If the URL is the same as the page you're placing the button on (which most of the time is the case), and you're OK with the default size of 80x20, simply leave it off and supply just the headline:

 <script type="text/javascript">
    farkItButton("Your headline goes here");
  </script>

If your headline has any double quotes in it, you should use single quotes (apostrophes) instead of double quotes around the headline.

If it has both double quotes and apostrophes, Javascript requires that you pick one and use backslashes to escape the other:

 <script type="text/javascript">
    farkItButton('Drew said "That\'s a great headline" yesterday');
  </script>

To use the default URL but specify a custom size:

 <script type="text/javascript">
    farkItButton('This is a cool headline', "", '16x16');
  </script>

To use the manual method

The FarkIt™ submission engine will accept your incoming link using the following URL:

 https://www.fark.com/farkit?u=[the url you want linked]&h=[the headline]

You will replace [the url you want linked] with the actual url of the item, and [the headline] with the text you wish to use as a headline on Fark.com. Note that you do not have to include any values for these parameters - if you leave the url parameter blank, the FarkIt submission engine will attempt to build the link using the referring page's url (the page where the FarkIt button was clicked). If the headline parameter is blank, then the user clicking the button will have to supply their own headline text.

Using this URL, you can create links with either text or button images. To link text, simply wrap the text you'd like to link in an anchor tag, like so:

 <a 
href="https://www.fark.com/farkit?u=http://www.coollink.com/cool.html&h=cool%20link">
The Text You Want To Be A Hyperlink</a>

To use your own image as a button, wrap the image HTML with the anchor HTML:

 <a href="https://www.fark.com/farkit?u=[the url you want linked]&h=[the headline]">
<img src="someimage.gif"></a>

If using the manual method, the text or image text must be one of the following options:

FarkIt
Fark It
FARK IT
Fark This
FARK THIS