Social Likes

Beautiful share buttons with counters for popular social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Vkontakte, etc. Uses jQuery.

See demo

Features

• Easy to install.
• Beautiful and all in one style (with three different skins).
• Won’t explode your page’s layout.

Installation and configuration

Use interactive builder to generate the code.

Or install via Bower: $ bower install social-likes.

Advanced configuration

Layout

Default

All buttons in a row.

<div class="social-likes">
	<div class="facebook" title="Share link on Facebook">Facebook</div>
	...
</div>

Vertical

All buttons in a column.

<div class="social-likes social-likes_vertical">
	<div class="facebook" title="Share link on Facebook">Facebook</div>
	...
</div>

Single button

One button with a counter (summ of all the networks). Opens popup with like buttons in vertical layout. Use data-single-title attribute to change button title.

<div class="social-likes social-likes_single" data-single-title="Share me!">
	<div class="facebook" title="Share link on Facebook">Facebook</div>
	...
</div>

Icons only

If you want to remove button titles add social-likes_notext class to make it looks better.

<div class="social-likes social-likes_notext">
	<div class="facebook" title="Share link on Facebook"></div>
	...
</div>

Options

Options define via HTML data attributes or JavaScript parameters object.

url

URL of shareable page. Current page by default.

title

Title for Twitter, Vkontakte and LiveJournal. Current page’s title by default.

html

HTML code for LiveJournal button. By default tag with link to current page.

counters

Disables “likes” counters when “no”. Default: “yes”.

zeroes

Show counters even when number is 0. Default: “no”.

single-title

Share button title for “single button” mode. Default: “Share”.

Examples:

<div class="social-likes" data-url="http://landscapists.info/" data-title="Landscapists of Russia">
	…
</div>

<div class="social-likes social-likes_single" data-single-title="This is Sharing!">
	…
</div>

$('.social-likes').socialLikes({
	url: 'https://github.com/sapegin/social-likes/',
	title: 'Beautiful “like” buttons with counters for popular social networks',
	counters: true,
	singleTitle: 'Share it!'
});

Services specific options

Twitter

You can specify via (site’s or your own Twitter) and related (any other Twitter you want to advertise) values for <div class="twitter">:

<div class="twitter" data-via="sapegin" data-related="Landscapists">Twitter</div>

Pinterest

You should specify an image URL via data-media attribute on <div class="pinterest">:

<div class="pinterest" data-media="http://example.com/image/url.jpg">Pinterest</div>

Manual initialization

Could be useful on dynamic (AJAX) websites.

<div id="share">
	<div class="facebook">Facebook</div>
	...
</div>

$('#share').socialLikes();

Dynamic URL changing

You can dynamically replace URL, title and Pinterest image without reinitialization.

<div id="share2" class="social-likes" data-url="http://example.com/" data-title="My example">
	<div class="facebook">Facebook</div>
	...
</div>

$('#share2').socialLikes({
	url: 'http://github.com/',
	title: 'GitHub',
	data: {
		media: 'http://birdwatcher.ru/i/userpic.jpg'  // Image for Pinterest button
	}
});

Refreshing counters

By default counters for any unique URL requested only once. You can force new request with forceUpdate option:

$('#share2').socialLikes({
	forceUpdate: true
});

Events

counter.social-likes

Triggers for every counter.

$('.social-likes').on('counter.social-likes', function(event, service, number) {
	// service: facebook, twitter, etc.
});

ready.social-likes

Triggers after all counters loaded.

$('.social-likes').on('ready.social-likes', function(event, number) {
	// number is total number of shares
});

popup_opened.social-likes

Triggers after popup window opened.

$('.social-likes').on('popup_opened.social-likes', function(event, service, win) {
	// win is popup window handler (window.open())
});

popup_closed.social-likes

Triggers after popup window closed.

$('.social-likes').on('popup_closed.social-likes', function(event, service) {
	// Request new counters
	$(event.currentTarget).socialLikes({forceUpdate: true});

	// Or just increase the number
	var counter = $(event.currentTarget).find('.social-likes__counter_' + service);
	counter.text(+(counter.text()||0)+1).removeClass('social-likes__counter_empty');
});

Adding your own button

You can find some custom buttons in contrib folder.

Define socialLikesButtons object:

var socialLikesButtons = {
	surfingbird: {
		popupUrl: 'http://surfingbird.ru/share?url={url}',
		popupWidth: 650,
		popupHeight: 500
	}
};

Or with a custom click handler:

var socialLikesButtons = {
	livejournal: {
		click: function(e) {
			// this.widget.data('something')
		}
	}
};

Add some CSS:

.social-likes__button_surfingbird {
	background: #f2f3f5;
	color: #596e7e;
	border-color: #ced5e2;
	}
.social-likes__icon_surfingbird {
	background: url(http://surfingbird.ru/img/share-icon.png) no-repeat 2px 3px;
	}

And use it like any other button:

<div class="surfingbird">Surf</div>

See sources (src folder) for available options and class names and contrib folder for custom buttons examples.

FAQ

Likes or shares?

This plugin allows your users to “share” the content of your website. (Un)fortunately¹ real “likes” are possible only when you use original Facebook, Google+, etc. buttons.

¹ I believe that “shares” are much better and valuable than “likes” because they’re more visible in feed and users could add they’re own comments to links they share. “Like” costs nothing.

How to change title, description and image

You can use Open Graph. It works for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Vkontakte).

You can add additional Twitter data using Twitter Card. You have to approve every type of Twitter Card.

<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:url" content="{page_url}">
<meta property="og:title" content="{title}">
<meta property="og:description" content="{description}">
<meta property="og:image" content="{image_url}">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@SiteTwitter">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@sapegin">

If you’re experiencing any problems with meta data try Open Graph Debugger and Twitter Card Validator.

How to use Social Likes with Wordpress, etc.

See wiki.

How to track activity with Google Analytics

You can track how many people click on each social button on your site with Google Analytics (or other analytics service). Note that you can track clicks only, not real shares.

$(document).on('popup_opened.social-likes', function(event, service) {
    ga('send', 'social', service, 'share', location.href);
});

Troubleshooting

Counters don’t work

In most cases if you don’t see counters it’s because social networks APIs return zeros. You could check API requests results in Network tab in your browser’s developer tools:

Double check that you use canonical URLs (without extra parameters such as utm_source). You can change URL via data-url option.

If you have more than one Social Likes blocks on a page with different URLs, Google+ counter will work only for the first block. Google+ counter also willn’t work when you refresh counters with forceUpdate option or change URL dynamically.

If your site have internationalized domain name (e.g. президент.рф) make sure you convert it to Punycode (e.g. xn--d1abbgf6aiiy.xn--p1ai).

If you’re sure that it’s a bug please file an issue and provide a link to a page with non-working counter.

Release History

The changelog can be found in the Changelog.md file.

Contributing

Everyone is welcome to contribute. Please take a moment to review the contributing guidelines.

Author

• Artem Sapegin

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License

The MIT License, see the included license.md file.