Following the instruction, I placed a readme.txt file inside my /trunk/ repository folder. It followed strictly the standard, I can swear this. Here is some texts taken from my readme file:

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== Description ==
"Digg This O' Mine" is a plugin that allows you to place the famous ["Digg This" button](http://digg.com/tools/integrate) at the end of your posts, pages, or anywhere at your choice. While it will run out of the box, it has several options that can be used to custom the button to fit your needs [...]
 
== Installation ==
1. Download and extract the plugin
1. Upload the entire `digg-this-o-mine` folder into to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
[...]
 
== Frequently Asked Questions ==
= I want to change the background color **inside** the button. How? =
As Digg specifies [here](http://digg.com/tools/integrate), only the background *around* the button is customizable. So until the folks at Digg change their mind, I don't see how [...]
 
== Screenshots ==
1. The options panel
2. The plugin in action
 

With this, I expected my plugin repository to show at least 4 tabs: Description, Installation, FAQ, and Screenshots. So it came to me as a sudden to see no tabs shown – except for the default Description taken from the plugin itself, and the “Stats” panel. What the heck?

It was really an annoyance. I googled around and tried many solutions: create a new tags folder and place another readme.txt file there, change readme.txt to README.txt, even copy the content of another working plugin. All was in vain – the stupid tabs just wouldn’t show up.

Well, not until today, when I opened two readme.txt files in Notepad++ at the same time. I noticed that the working one (taken from another good plugin out there) was in UNIX format and encoded in ANSI, when my bad boy was in Windows, UCS2-Big Endian. If was likely the ONLY difference! So I decided to convert my file into UNIX and ANSI (well, I doubt the latter is relevant now, but hell with it). And voilà: the tabs showed themselves up, just like magic!

This turns out to be very simple in the end, but trust me, it was truly a headache. So if you’re encountering something like this, hope this post helps!

And as you may know, Digg allows us to integrate the “Digg This” button into virtually any web page. Yes, this naturally includes my WordPress posts. Yay!

The integration is dead simple. To display a “Digg This” button in my post, I only need to place this code somewhere:

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<script type="text/javascript">
    digg_url = "My post's permalink";
</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Or, in case I want to customize the button a bit:

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<script type="text/javascript">
    digg_url     = "My post's permalink";
 
    digg_title   = "My post's title";
 
    // The background color *around* the button
    digg_bgcolor = "#ff9900";
 
    // The "skin" of the button. "Compact" means that tiny icon.
    digg_skin    = "compact";
 
    // Clicking on the button will open the Digg link in a new tab/window
    digg_window  = "new";
</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Can’t be simpler right? But I’m not satisfied with this… Firstly, I’m lazy and it bores me to death to copy and paste the scripts above into every new post. Second, if I change the permalink of my post, I’ll have to edit it to update the URL or the button will be in trouble. And third, it will be hell if someday I decide to change the layout of the buttons in all posts, or if Digg changes something in its integration code.

So I was thinking about a “Digg This” plugin that can automate everything for me. And it beat me to see that there’s none, or at least I couldn’t find any.

Then I decided to write one myself. By the way, this is my first attempt to write a plugin for WordPress – I’ve hacked plenty though, like WP-Syntax, All In One SEO Pack etc. It took me one day and lot of headache, but finally I managed to get my Digg This O’ Mine working smoothly, and I’m using it right now.

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/*
Plugin Name: Digg This O' Mine
Plugin URI: http://www.phoenixheart.net/2008/10/digg-this-o-mine
Description: Place a "Digg This" button at the end of your posts, pages, or anywhere at your choice.
Version: 1.0
Author: Phoenixheart
Author URI: http://www.phoenixheart.net
*/

It can be downloaded here. Just like any other plugin, just unzip and upload it into your wp-content/plugins folder, activate it through the “Plugins” panel, and it will work out of the box. If you want more power, head to Settings->Digg This O’ Mine to configure some options:

(The numbers and shading effect are added using Photoshop).

The (background) color picker was implemented using the fantastic Farbtastic jQuery plugin.

Feel free to download, use, and maybe extend this plugin, as it’s licensed under GPL. Comments and bug reports are always welcomed!

As the final line: I attempted to add this plugin into WordPress repository, but somehow I’ve not received any email from them. I would appreciate a lot if someone could guide me through the plugin adding process, as I’m now totally stuck. I’ve managed to add it to WordPress. Now it’s an “official” plugin there.