I was talking to MJ Monaghan yesterday and he said he couldn’t get a Facebook like button to display on his blog – he noted that I didn’t have them on my blog at the bottom of the post at the time (I now do), but had no idea why it wasn’t showing – it had been there while he was on WordPress.com but some readers noted that the Like button had disappeared and they wanted it back.
My first thought was that you need a plugin to show things like that or to code it into each post or your theme yourself. After a little looking around I realised that he actually had a plugin installed – just set up incorrectly. This isn’t surprising as social sharing not necessarily something you think about when setting up a blog (at least not first off!). What we’re trying to achieve looks like this:
The plugin you need for these sharing buttons is Jetpack – the statistics plugin by Automattic (the guys who created WordPress). It’s free to install and almost sets itself up. If you want to use the statistics side of things then you need to connect that to a WordPress.com account. But how do we set up the social icons?
To display things as I have them set out here I’ve chosen the icons+text option and dragged the Facebook, Twitter, and G+ icons to the Enabled Services section, and all the rest to the box on the right of that – so if you click on +Share you can share my blog posts in other ways.
To change how things are shared and what the button looks like, explore the drop down menus that are available for the majority of icons – for example you can choose whether you want people to Like on Facebook, or Share, and if you want to have a smart button for Twitter and many other services. Have a play around and then save your changes.
So that’s how you add the basic sharing buttons to the post and customise them to your preferences, I hope this post clears things up for MJ and anyone else out there who’s been trying to figure out how to add these buttons! Of course there are lots of plugins to show sharing buttons on your blog, but if you’re on WordPress then the chances are you probably already have Jetpack installed so may as well give it a try! If you have a favorite plugin for sharing then please share it in the comments.
About Rosemary Jayne
Twitter: ElaineSGriffin
says:
I love the Simple Social Bookmarks plugin by David Artiss. I love it because it is customizable, although that does take some advanced knowledge. Check it out!
http://www.artiss.co.uk/simple-social-bookmarks
Twitter: rosemary_jayne
says:
I’ll definitely check it out! I’m using Digg Digg and Jetpack at the moment but I’ve been looking for something else
Twitter: artiss_tech
says:
Thanks for the recommendation. Let me know if you know any assistance.
I’m working on some big changes for future release to make it easier to implement. The problem is the large number of social bookmarking sites my plugin provides – adding that to an admin site would be unwieldy
David.
Twitter: techmaninder
says:
Nice one Rosemary. Keep up the your good blog going.
Admin edit: Name changed to comply with the comments policy.
Twitter: TheSminso
says:
Another great tool is to use Optin Skin. Some of the included optin areas have a social portion that you can add in! This adds it to the bottom of every post along with a place for people to subscribe! Not sure if you are ok with me posting a link to my post about it, http://www.sminso.com/get-more-blog-subscribers feel free to edit it if you want!
Chris
Twitter: rosemary_jayne
says:
No edit required Chris – you were sharing your own blog post because it’s genuinely relevant, and that’s fine by me!
I do like Optin Skin but it bugs me that it only loads when I reach it, because by that time I’m often a line or two into the comments and then suddenly they get pushed down the page. Either way it’s on my list of things that I might invest in after my blog has broken even
Twitter: TheSminso
says:
Hi Rosemary,
You can actually chose when the form loads right within the plugin! The fade in effect is just to draw peoples attention, you can shut that off!
Chris
Twitter: rosemary_jayne
says:
That’s great to know! I’ll definitely look into it more when I have a positive cash flow