Good alternatives because LINKALPHA have ruined this.

I’d be interested as well

“Share Buttons by AddToAny” is working well for the share buttons at the bottom (or top) of each post.

As for the follow widgets in the sidebar I have used tablepress to make them myself

I have tried countless social sharing plugins & for one reason or another, I always came back to Social Sharing Toolkit… until now! I have since deactivated it from all of my sites!

The other sharing plugin that I use is “Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons”.

The dev is responsive & updates regularly & the plugin is solid without the added garbage that so many other social sharing plugins utilize to serve the devs interests. While I completely understand that we all deserve to be compensated for our work, I’d rather pay a few bucks per month yet have control over the plugin w/o all the tracking, etc. At least the dev should openly disclose such info. But I digress…

Great suggestion dbizzle! AddToAny did the job and it loads super fast, by the way.

Thanks

After a lot of trial and error I advise you all to check out Socialize https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/socialize/ in my opinion the best social sharing plugin.

Hi, that behaviour seems to betray the WordPress policy for plugins. You can email [email protected] to report it; if you know the code file and line, point to it as well.

Hm? Which behavior violates the plugin guidelines?

Hi Jan,
the issues cited by dbizzle (the linkalpha button, the fact they unethically collect your sharing data “to better serve ads of interest” to them and you on or off the website, without asking for permission), if confirmed, seem to violate the Plugin Guidelines, points 7 and 10.

Unfortunately, these plugin suggestions do not include a shortcode option or adding text to buttons (like the words Twitter or Facebook), both of which I use with the Social Sharing Toolkit.

I use Simple Share Button Adder – it works perfectly, allows you to select from multiple button designs, sizes, and locations.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/simple-share-buttons-adder/

Jan & Whiletrue –

It is difficult to locate specifically in the code (for those who’re just knowledgable enough to make small changes) where the developer has hard-coded their Facebook app id. Opening the page source clearly shows it, but I haven’t been able to find it in the actual plugin code.

Basically what they’re doing is intercepting all of a site’s Facebook data when someone shares from a site using the plugin.

@whiletrue, @danetidwell, @jan Dembowski, @dbizzle, @dirty Bill

It has generally been my understanding that an API key must first be created by the site owner before a facebook api call can be successfully passed. Usually, it’s the only key present on the site once the plugin utilizing the API is active.

However, a line by line inspection of files in the ‘includes’ directory of this plugin reveals the following hard-coded value:

appId=188707654478

in the directory:
social-sharing-toolkit.2.2\social-sharing-toolkit\includes\buttons
in the file:
button.facebook.php
on lines:
66, 76, 82, 88, 104

Hopefully other users will find this information in the debugging of the aforementioned issue.

https://www.active-bits.nl/support/social-sharing-toolkit/

If the underlying code is still good and users like the plugin, perhaps a fork is in order to restore the proper functionality.

Frizzy-

That is correct. The entire purpose of the Facebook application creation is to allow tracking and interaction between the site (or content) owner and Facebook.

A Facebook application is not explicitly required for the share functionality. And having one hard-coded in the plugin completely bypasses the content owner. It allows the plugin owner (LinkAlpha) to track who is sharing the site’s content, what is being shared, when, basically everything available at https://facebook.com/insights to site/content owners. How their content is performing is being consolidated and tracked by LinksAlpha.

Further, LinksAlpha looks to be attempting to profit from siloing site owner’s data. Their website sells a subscription-based social media management tool. I haven’t signed up for a free trial since a far superior tool is https://sproutsocial.com, but I’m willing to bet that the plugin’s data for your site is only available with a paid subscription to their service.

LinksAlpha… If I’m wrong, answer one of the 10 threads on here questioning your credibility.

I also haven’t looked, but I would be willing to bet that their other plugins (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/network-publisher/) use a similar subterfuge to steal sharing data.