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AddThis Best Practices for WordPress

I currently have a real penchant for using AddThis. I think it’s technique of focussing all of the social sharing functionality into 1 system with unmatched usability is fantastic. Especially when coupled with WordPress – the 2 systems integrate very well. The analytical options too is very useful.

I have spent many, many hours tinkering with AddThis and I believe I am totally happy with the way I now have it set-up – it is optimal and I’ve subsequently implemented it on most of the websites I manage. I shall explain what I have done…

Here is a full list of all the accounts you will need to set-up to activate all of my suggestions, for setting AddThis properly up for full social network exposure in WordPress.

  1. AddThis
  2. Google+
  3. Twitter
  4. Facebook
  5. LinkedIn
  6. Feedburner
  7. Google Analytics
  8. Bitly

Ok firstly set-up an AddThis account if you haven’t already…

  • 1)  The Follow functionality (which in WordPress I utilise with a text widget – see top of my menu)… set-up as many of these accounts and pages as you require, or indeed if you can I suggest using them all; Twitter account, Facebook page, Google+ page, LinkedIn account (note – at the time of writing AddThis don’t provide a way to automatically link to a company page – only a personal profile) and finally a Feedburner account. If you don’t use them all remove the unnecessary code.

Obviously change the Users IDs and URL to your own accounts! Don’t forget to add your own AddThis pubid… where the Xs are (you can find it in Addthis’s profile settings):

<br>Follow Me:<br>
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style">
<a class="addthis_button_facebook_follow" addthis:userid="pages/dannyvincenet/397446383602380" ></a>
<a class="addthis_button_twitter_follow" addthis:userid="dannyvince" ></a>
<a class="addthis_button_google_follow" addthis:userid="106657610800512014610" ></a>
<a class="addthis_button_linkedin_follow" addthis:userid="danielvince" ></a>
<a class="addthis_button_rss_follow" addthis:url="https://feeds.feedburner.com/dannyvince" ></a>
<script src="https://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" type="text/javascript"></script>
Please note, this above follow AddThis toolbox code can be used in any site… not just worpress!
  • 2) The Sharing functionality… For this I suggest using the standard WordPress AddThis plugin with a few configurations.
In the AddThis plugin basic tab, choose the layout for above and below the post that you like, enter your AddThis profile ID, AddThis username & AddThis password.
In the advanced tab pick the settings your require… I recommend ticking Track address bar shares (this will cause strange characters to appear after your URLs but don’t worry it won’t effect SEO, the allow AddThis to track the offline sharing of your URLs.
Add your Google Analytics property ID should you have one… and if you don’t you really should get consider getting set-up with Google Analytics.
Most importantly in the Twitter Template field add the following: check out {{url}} from @XXXXXXXXXX (but where the XXXXXs are add your Twitter username)* this will remove the @AddThis from the Tweets and replace it with your own. And the final account you need is a Bitly Account add the login to the login field and the key in the key field (which you can get from the Bitly setting area).
*Just as an aside if you need to remove the @addthis from a hardcoded toolbox (rather than in the above example a plugin) all you need to do is to add this to your code:
<script>
var addthis_share = {
templates : {
twitter : "{{title}} {{url}} @XXXXXXX"
}
}
</script>
If you have any questions please ask.
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