Exclude AddThis from individual pages

+1

No need to have a share button on my “contact form” ??

It’s quite easy to hack this into the code (by using custom post fields), but there should be an official way of doing this.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll add it to my list of features for a future release. In order to not overcomplicate the UI, I’m thinking that it will require creating a custom field for the specific post/page that you don’t want to have AddThis displayed on. Let me know if you have a better idea for the implementation.

That’s what I would do.

Alternatively you could add a checkbox to the “Discussion” Meta Box.

wp-admin/includes/meta-boxes.php -> do_action(‘post_comment_status_meta_box-options’, $post);

Not sure where to plug in for fetching and saving the data, but I’m sure theres some documentation somewhere ??

@jorbin, that’s exactly what I had in mind (a simple exclude/include checkbox for every post/page), thanks.

Additionally, for a later release perhaps, you could add in the settings page the ability to include/exclude categories, but the individual post exclusion is more important for me right now and probably more useful.

Thanks again.

Sticking with the WordPress philosophy to design for the majority, I slightly disagree with you guys on this one. I think it’s a rare enough instance that cluttering up most users interface would be more harmfull then good.

For storage post meta is what makes the most sense to me.

Which point are you disagreeing with? Could you also explain how are you ascertaining what the majority wants?

Many thanks.

Sure, cluttering the interface up is bad thing to do, but…

• I think disabling the addthis functionality is similarily common to disabling comments or trackbacks – and there’s a meta box for that in the editor (“Discussion”).
• If you don’t need it, you can disable the meta box by either collapsing it or by hiding it completely.
• The “BASIC USER” probably doesn’t make use of custom fields. He’s better off with a simple checkbox that’s either on or off. That’s just easier than having to remember which setting to use in the custom fields.

If you’re bothered about annoying someone by an additional checkbox (which I don’t think would happen) you could also have another additional setting in your plugin settings to enable/disable the checkbox ]:-)

Further to my last point, I don’t think it’s possible at this point to say that the majority would or wouldn’t want this, unless you have explicitly asked via a poll or something. I’m all for not adding any and all arbitrarily requested feature but it seems to me like this one is a basic necessity. The absence of people asking for it can’t really be taken as an indication of lack of desire.

My strong suspicion is, if you did poll users of this plugin to ask explicitly if they wanted the ability to not show share buttons on certain pages I am certain the answer would be emphatically yes. Allowing people to share pages you don’t want shared is a pretty big flaw. For example, one of my pages allows a download of a paid-for product. The page is hidden from navigation. Even though the download link on the page is protected by a script to prevent download without purchase, you can imagine that I don’t particularly want boxes all over this page implicitly inviting people to share my download page with all-and-sundry on Facebook. Someone who couldn’t write PHP scripts like this would have a problem.

I am sure there are other types of pages where site owners would not want to implicitly encourage sharing by the appearance of the share buttons on the page—password protected pages, an obvious example. Another – a market research questionnaire or poll for mailing list subscribers only that you wouldn’t want to hinder people from completing by adding a password but you don’t want to risk people sharing the page with those outside your target group. On others, like contact forms, it just doesn’t make sense.

As BlaM4c said, I don’t really see anyone being inconvenienced by this checkbox, and you can provide the ability to turn it off in the main settings page.

The reality is, and I’m not saying this just to try and twist your arm, I would have to move to a different sharing service (or different AddThis plugin at least, if such a thing exists) if I can’t exclude certain pages from sharing buttons.

Thanks very much for your consideration.

Let me rephrase this since I don’t want you to get the wrong idea (which my hastily worded response may have).

The majority of the plugins users use our service in a traditional way, which is to have the buttons appear on every post. This is based on the number of URLS and domains that have addthis on them. Additionally, the lack of users speaking up does mean that this isn’t a feature that a majority of our users are clamoring for.

In the next release (which will be shortly), I’ll include the option via a custom field. In a future release I’ll add in an easier to use option for disabling AddThis on each post (though I am leaning strongly toward this being hidden and needing to be enabled via screen options).

Thanks for your reply. I do wonder sometimes if the majority of users never ask for anything, or aren’t aware that they can ask but I suppose, as you say, if it bothered them enough they would. Perhaps more would have as time goes on but, anyway, thanks for listening and for offering to provide a solution. I am very grateful.

The version released today allows for you to set addthis_exclude custom field to ‘true’ for it not to work. Next big release I’ll add in a better UI/UX for this.

Thanks, jorbin. The custom field works great. I really appreciate the quick response.

Wow! I requested this feature literally years ago when your plug-in first came out, and had given up hoping to ever get it. Thanks for finally adding it!

Would it be possible to exclude by category as well?

I have certain posts that are visible to a limited group of users (with Role Scoper) for a period of time and later I publish those to everyone by simply moving the posts to a public category. I would not want the group members to share a link that leads the public to a 404 during the restricted period.

A simple field in the AddThis setting where one could put a comma separated list of excluded category IDs would be just fine.