At the moment Google+ does not offer a social button for people to share a URL to their Google+ profile. The only option to share a URL is to copy and paste the URL, go to plus.google.com and paste it into the share section of your stream.

I found this very annoying, which led me to figure out how to do this in an unofficial way. On 9th August 2011 I wrote a post on State of Search on how I did this and how you can add it to your own site. As soon as it was published I realised the need to build a WordPress plugin for this functionality.

Installation:

1. Download the plugin direct from the Plugin Page at WordPress.
2. Upload the whole plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
3. Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin
4. Insert the shortcode!

Using the Shortcode:

You must use the Google+ Share Button as a shorrtcode only (for now). Enter the following shortcode within a page, post or text widget. Here’s an example:

[gplusbutton]

will output this:

Options:

At the moment there’s only one custimsation, but soon there will be more:

FAQ:

Why does it look so basic?

Because this functionality isn’t official, I have had to use the mobile version of Google+ to make this plugin work. This is the only way unfortunately

Can I enter my own Message?

Not yet, but it will be available in the next update.

How can I implement this directly into my WordPress theme?

To enter the shortcode directly into templates using PHP, enter
echo do_shortcode(' ');