How To Remove The Digg Bar From Your Blog
I hate websites who place frames around sites I have built. What right do they have to stop a user viewing my site its entirety. It’s such a cheap 1990s scummy method of ensuring that the user doesn’t stay on your site for long and returns back to the toolbar owners site.
So Diggs recent addition of a toolbar annoyed me. Infact, it pissed off quite a lot of people. I for one cannot understand why they have introduced this. Digg was built on user content. It was built by webmasters and bloggers who promoted Digg to their users in the hope that Digg would send a lot of traffic back. But Digg is trying to stop sending quality traffic back to the people who helped build it.
With a URL frame around content, there is no SEO benefit from promoting Digg. It also increases their traffic stats and reduces yours. Brant from X Pose also pointed out a few more reasons why the Digg Bar sucks. The one which really pissed me off was hearing that they had stripped away the meta tags of my blog and replaced it with “Digg, Digg.com, news, images, videos, vote, content”. They also have an ad tracker in the toolbar so they are clearly planning on adding advertisements to YOUR BLOG in the future.
Goodbye Digg
Because of all of this, I have removed the Digg voting link from BloggingTips and it will not return until Digg remove their toolbar. I was never a big Digg user so I doubt this will concern them too much but I am sure that many other bloggers and webmasters feel the same way I do.
Digg know what they are doing. I’m sure that their traffic will increase because of this move but I strongly believe they have forgotten their roots and forgotten how much their site depends on it’s users. A lot of their traffic depends on webmasters and bloggers placing the Digg button on their sites and they are now getting a pretty bad deal.
Seriously, why would you send a visitor to Digg knowing that any visitors they do send back will not actually visit your site, rather they will be viewing your site through Digg.
This is why I have placed a frame breaker on BloggingTips. If any of you feel the way I do then I encourage you to read on 
How To Remove The Digg Bar From Your Blog
I searched Digg for some BloggingTips articles which have been dugg. The first one i came across was 100 Great Blog Logos : Volume 2. Though now, instead of linking to www.bloggingtips.com/2008/10/24/100-great-blog-logos-2/, they now link to www.digg.com/d1cqDg (and with it goes the SEO benefit of a link from Digg!).
So Digg visitors saw this :
To remove this toolbar you need to use what is called a Frame Breaker. All you need to do is add the following code to the HEAD section of your header template (i.e. before the </head> tag) :
<script type="text/javascript">
if (top !== self) top.location.href = self.location.href;
</script>
When you add this to your blog the visitor will still see the Digg Toolbar for a second or so and then it will be removed (So for the visitor to go back to Digg they would have to click the back button twice).
There are a lot of basic javascript methods for breaking a frame but I found this to be the best one. If you don’t want Digg, or any other website for that matter, placing a frame around your blog, then I recommend adding the above code to your header template,
If you have any problems adding this to your blog please leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help
Overview
I don’t like content thieves, I don’t like trolls and I don’t like websites placing frames around my blog. Why should they be allowed to reduce our traffic stats and reduce the chances of a visitor browsing the rest our blogs. Heck, they might not even know what blog they are viewing because the URL at the top of the browser will say Digg.com and not YourBlog.com.
I hope BloggingTips users don’t miss the Digg button too much. I know that many of you like Digg and I’m sure some of you even find their new toolbar useful so I hope you can appreciate my view on the matter.
Personally, as someone who is using Twitter more and more, I prefer the Retweet Me vote button from TweetMeMe as it allows you to quickly share a good link with friends and associates much easier.
I hope you find the Frame Breaker code useful and as always, I would love to hear your opinions on all of this
Thanks,
Kevin
Written by Kevin Muldoon from WordPress ModsPosted on April 7th, 2009 and filed under Design & Coding
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45 Responses to “How To Remove The Digg Bar From Your Blog”
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[...] As Kevin mentioned in his earlier post about the new DiggBar, there are a lot of reasons why Webmasters don’t want their sites placed in frames. [...]
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[...] contains the original page. This move is already much hated by many, with some people including framebuster scripts or even special greeting messages for Digg. On the other hand one could also argue: let Digg do [...]
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[...] How To Remove The Digg Bar From Your Blog – Written by Kevin Muldoon from Kevin Muldoon I hate websites who place frames around sites I have built. What right do they have to stop a us… [...]
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[...] I’ve been using the DiggBar regularly for the past week or so, when a site is using Framebuster or Frame Killer code to disable it, it sometimes can throw me off (particularly if I closed the [...]
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[...] Disable Diggbar using Javascript - BloggingTips explains how adding a small framebreaker javascript code within your page <HEAD> tags can work. When you add this to your blog the visitor will [...]
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Thank you so much for pointing this out. I was none the wiser until I saw this post. As my site is new to the net I am relying heavily on sites like Digg to help with SEO. I’m now going to implement that handy bit of code on my site in a one-finger-salute style to Mr Digg and his wicked ways!
I fully appreciate how you feel, and I’m sure many bloggers are feeling the same…
Thanks again!
Darren
Interesting tip, and its certainly going to be interesting to see how Digg handles the backlash (if its loud enough).
I use No Frames WordPress plugin that automatically removes frames. It works same as the given code.
You make a good argument. I hope this does create a backlash for Diggs.
I like your solution, it’s easy to implement and solves many problems associated with toolbars (but not the SEO one, though)
However, won’t this break a “legitimate” toolbar such as the StumbleUpon one?
Darren – Glad it’s helped you
Paul – Very good point. There has been a lot of people pissed off about this but I’m not sure there’s enough noise for them to be forced to remove it.
Mr I – Good tip. I’m sure some people would prefer to implement this using a plugin
Peter – No this will not break up legitimate toolbars. I mentioned this in my reply to Jonathans post Framing is on The Rise and it’s Bad News. Stumbleupon does not use a frame around sites it links to. Their toolbar is a plugin therefore it sits above the content window of your browser and can be switched off or removed at any time. Plus downloading it in the first place is your choice. This is what Digg should have offered.
Facebook are doing something, if not the same, similar. If you use Google News search – you will see with certain providers if you should, say, Reddit, you will see that the link in the submission will say (Google.com) rather than the actual URL you have read and submitted.
Thanks for this! I implemented this on my blog and it works great.
I have a better solution.
if (top !== self) top.location.href = ‘http://www.brownlove.com’;
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Would it be a problem for you if it was a website that looked exactly like an OS desktop with an iframe that looked like your favorite browser, including stupid toolbar plugins? What if it was a kiosk machine with a browser surrounded by embedded advertisements? If not, why all the pointless rage against a crappy website essentially doing the same thing?
I’m not a fan of the Javascript solution (server-side tweak would be cleaner) but am upvoting this because the Digg toolbar is basically theft. That said, the Digg toolbar probably won’t hurt your traffic:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/09/digg-says-diggbar-is-not-evil-and-is-lifting-visitors-by-20-percent/
Still, it’s annoying.
Thanks for that JD. Yeah I’ve since read that they use the rel=”canonical” tag so that juice is passed.
As I wrote in a reply to Chris Garrett on The Blog Herald the seo link was a never a big issue with me as Digg is all about traffic and not seo benefits (i.e. an article with 1,000 diggs gets one link, much the same as an article with 1 digg). For me it’s about them manipulating how my website is viewed.
Out of interest, whats the best way to use brake frames using a server side solution?
Chris – I agree with you that Digg is a crappy website but you have to understand why a lot of bloggers are annoyed about this. We send targeted traffic to digg and in return they send users back with a toolbar attached, which reduces the chance of them hanging around. Also, the fact they are testing out ads in the toolbar is worrying i.e. they could add advertisements to your blog. I don’t work several hours a day just for some other company to piggyback off me and using my content to make money.
Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations
.THANX FOR MAKING SUCH A COOL BLOG,I REALLY LIKE YOUR WRITING STYLE , KEEP IT UP 
Your grammar and spelling piss me off.
The javascrript interferes with WordPress’s theme preview and activation function. I.e, you can’t activate a them that includes that code in its header.
This blogger says that Digg’s “canonical” tag doesn’t actually confer any Pagerank onto your site — that it only appears to.
http://www.seoverflow.com/blog/seo/the-digg-bar-is-bad-for-seo/
One blogger said that Digg’s “canonical” meta tag was broken, and Digg wasn’t really conferring any Pagerank on the linked-to page — they were only pretending to.
http://www.seoverflow.com/blog/seo/the-digg-bar-is-bad-for-seo/
Hey, Thanks for this wonderful tip! You’re right. I tried applying it in my blog and it works!
I am confused because
– I assume you have implemented the code
– The diggbar is at the top of your site (http://digg.com/d1oP2I)
Possibly its implemented on another blog, and not this one?
Gus – I will be looking at an alternative method in a few days.
Czarina – Glad you found it useful
Cyril – That article is on TheBlogHerald, not BloggingTips.
the Blog Herald vs Blogging tips:
Well now, here is something interesting.
I clicked a link from the Herald site to reach Blogging Tips.
Blogging Tips opened in the (Firefox 3.08) Window,
-BUT-
The original Diggbar remained at the top of the screen,
-AND-
The original DigUrl stayed in the browser’s URL bar.
That behavior persists irrespective of where I go: until, of course I close the Window. It *seems* (I don’t know better) as if the Digg Frame holds whatever is entered into it
Does anyone else see this behavior, or is it just me?
I don’t understand why Digg is doing everything possible to alienate new users, make it ever more difficult to get noticed and voted on their site (if you have a counter on your blog and get decent traffic, you’ll have an easier time), and try to get rid of users who make a fuss about these changes.
Is it because they can? Is it because with their traffic and user group, they don’t care what owners of other blogs think? Are they going to become one of the internet bullies who’s technology is so widely used, they can mandate their will with impunity?
You might be able to use location.replace instead, which would mean you wouldn’t need to click back twice. Though I wonder whether the browser might refuse for security reasons?
if (!/https?:\/\/[^/]*\.example\.com/.match(top.location.href))
top.location.replace(self.location.href);