
Show HN: Sharingbuttons.io – Fast and easy social media sharing buttons - mxstbr
http://sharingbuttons.io
======
onli
People who like this also might like shariff, privacy enabled social media
buttons by the german tech publisher heise:
[https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff](https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff),
[https://heiseonline.github.io/shariff/](https://heiseonline.github.io/shariff/).

~~~
funkyy
While this is a good suggestion, shouldn't this have its own thread? This is
"Show HN" \- a chance to startup owners to shine. Such a post steals their
momentum...

~~~
mxstbr
No hard feelings, sharingbuttons isn't a startup by a long shot, just a fun
personal open source project! People should have choices :+1:

~~~
funkyy
Sure, just talking overall. I see this trend starting on HN recently. I have
seen few times when cool projects got hijacked even by owners of different,
similar startups. Thus the comment. Good job btw.

~~~
onli
In my opinion it depends. Here we are talking about really the same idea, and
shariff is something I already used. It also is a few steps further, it has a
backend to get vote counters and plugins for several frameworks, like
Serendipity, Drupal and Wordpress (now, that is something which might have
stolen the spotlight, and I opted to not mention that here).

But no, to your question, I don't think it is a new phenomenon or unwanted to
mention related projects in comments. That's why I did not even consider that
it might hurt op, thanks for chiming in. But yes, shariff should probably have
its own thread, the ones I found are old and did get no attention. I'll re-
submit it.

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NKCSS
It's nice, but people love to see the number of current likes.

For one of my customers, I created a Facebook like area [0](visible on the
bottom of the site) that shows the amount of likes. All required data is
retrieved server-side and cached; to not expose end-users to Facebook tracking
while still providing images and like count.

[0]: [https://www.bakkerij-emmerix.be/be](https://www.bakkerij-emmerix.be/be)

It uses the user-supplied images by facebook (square and banner) with the
option to supply a larger-version than Facebook returns.

It's not rocket science, but it makes the site load a lot faster and does not
expose the user to tracking.

~~~
LukeShu
Out of curiosity, how do you do the caching? How long is the cache valid for?
Is it only triggered by a user request, or is it updated by a cron job or
similar?

~~~
NKCSS
Website was written in C# (ASP.NET MVC); the data is cached in-memory on the
webserver.

I have caching limit (Like Count = 3 minutes, Page info (name, images, etc.) =
1 hour).

Every time one of the resources is requested from the webserver; it's served
from memory (initial retrieval on site start); and on access, it's checked how
old the data is. If the data's older than the threshold, it's refreshed async
and displayed on the next request.

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rayalez
Does anyone know if there's any data on how freauently people use sharing
buttons? Do sharing buttons actually significantly increase sharing?

I don't remember ever clicking on a sharing button, except by accident, I
always just copy paste the url, seems way more convenient.

Do you guys use them?

//In any case - awesome project!

~~~
haasn
I always copy/paste the URL when I want to share a website. That's what the
URL is meant for. Heck, it's easier to copy the URL (using the keyboard) than
it is to use the mouse to click on some button.

Sharing buttons are a nuisance more than anything. at best, I'd say they're a
tool to enable spying on users and should be categorically blocked (as
standard uBlock₀ filter rules let you do with a single click).

~~~
hexane360
I can't believe Amazon doesn't have a "copy link" button. I guess they don't
want too many "amzn.to" links floating around, but I hate to need to use bitly
or an extension just to get the compressed link.

I think the ideal solution should be very similar to Android's sharing setup:
One unified share button that can be sent to different apps or copied to
clipboard. [http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/nexu...](http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/nexus2cee_Screenshot_2014-10-17-15-19-351.png)

~~~
komali2
I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you mean a button that grabs the
current URL you're at? Do other websites have this?

I'm not challenging you, I genuinely don't understand what you're talking
about.

~~~
Spivak
A button to generate a shortened link. For example, when you click share on
YouTube, you get a youtu.be link.

~~~
mintplant
Why do you still need shortened links? For text messages, aesthetics, or ease
of analog communication? Twitter, previously the main use case, no longer
counts link length in tweets.

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haasn
While I don't think the URL shortening matters too much, there's still another
important attribute of using these shortlinks that manifests itself on
youtube: They also omit irrelevant metadata like URL parameters that were
specific to your session or the way you arrived at the site.

For example, youtube will often include extra garbage parameters for stuff
like playlists - which the youtu.be shorturls omit, making them perfect for
sharing videos.

~~~
jessaustin
These parameters are not apparent to those with whom you share the shortlink,
but I'd wager that the site stores a mapping from the shortlink to the session
in which it was generated. Which may be OK for you; I don't know.

~~~
Kliment
the youtu.be link contains nothing but the video's identifier, so I don't see
how they could store a mapping

~~~
jessaustin
Is the identifier unique? Does it have to be? Without switching to a different
browser on a different IP addr and finding the same video again through a
different search, would you even know?

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mintplant
Yes, the format is youtu.be/<video id> where <video id> matches the one in the
long URL (youtube.com/watch?v=<video id>&extra patameters...) and is unique to
the video.

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jamesroseman
This is fantastic, thanks for sharing it!

On another note, I'm a huge fan of small utilities like this. Sometimes
cruising HN it's easy to get it in my head that a project isn't worth doing
unless it's a scalable VC business ready to submit to YC, or a community-
supported FOSS. It's nice to see a little web utility doing its thing online.

~~~
mxstbr
Thanks for the love! Glad you like it!

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brianschildt
Nice work - I just put them onto ind.ie' list of Stopgaps -
[https://forum.ind.ie/t/a-nice-project-for-no-tracking-
share-...](https://forum.ind.ie/t/a-nice-project-for-no-tracking-share-
buttons-sharingbuttons-io/1286).

A while ago I made a Share Buttons WP plugin with no tracking as well - can be
found here [https://github.com/privacore/sharebuttons-
wp](https://github.com/privacore/sharebuttons-wp)

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xpose2000
This is an amazing idea, and I will be implementing this today. Great job. I
haven't seen any rendering problems across browsers either.

The only change I would make is to remove the "Share on Twitter" text that is
included with each large button on the website example. It's pretty much
implied for the end user once they see the colors of the buttons and the
icons.

For example, I shortened "Share on Twitter" to just "Twitter".

~~~
niftich
Along this point, I feel the 'medium' preset's removal of the logos is odd as
it's not typically done. I'd rather see the medium preset be '[logo] Twitter'
instead.

~~~
mxstbr
Those actually sound like a brilliant idea! Would you mind submitting an issue
so I don't forget it? (or submit a PR?)
[https://github.com/mxstbr/sharingbuttons.io](https://github.com/mxstbr/sharingbuttons.io)

~~~
xpose2000
I submitted an issue mentioning both ideas. In fact, medium & large can be
combined into one layout called "normal".

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spiderfarmer
I would love it if I could just opt out of sharing buttons altogether (without
resorting to browser extensions).

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K2L8M11N2
Nice work, there's just one thing, I'd change "share on email" to "share _via_
email".

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_RPM
This is perfect. I wish I had known about this last week. I was volunteering
for an event that my work place sponsored -- It was a "girls who code" thing,
and I was helping them with HTML and they wanted something like this. All the
ones I found didn't work out of the box.

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nathan_f77
Oh WOW, actually embedding the icons as plain SVG. Color me impressed.

~~~
mxstbr
Thanks! _blush_

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ads1018
Another great option is Open Share:
[http://openshare.social](http://openshare.social)

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franciscop
Acording to Gov.uk, which are actually quite good at it, these buttons don't
really make sense:

[https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/20/gov-uk-social-
sha...](https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/02/20/gov-uk-social-sharing-
buttons-the-first-10-weeks/)

Edit: the website is really awesome though, I love how it looks/work.

~~~
KingMob
Yes, but that's a governmental website, which probably has a much lower
sharing rate because most of their pages are not that interesting.

~~~
wgx
Exactly. They are literally the most boring pages on the Internet.

~~~
franciscop
Totally disagree, for the kind of content they are the best ones. They are
even better than all blogs and tutorial about those topics that I found. Try
to find the same info about ANY other country

------
petewailes
These are really nice. If anyone's using Ghost and wants to see them in the
wild, take a look at something like
[https://wail.es/opendaws/](https://wail.es/opendaws/)

~~~
mxstbr
Oooh awesome!

Anybody else reading this who's using them, would love to see your sites!

~~~
petewailes
BTW, the SSL cert is invalid on
[https://www.pgpasc.org/](https://www.pgpasc.org/)

~~~
mxstbr
Ah, sigh. I don't have the time to maintain that anymore, I'm afraid, I
haven't even found the time to properly shut it down yet…

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sotojuan
Hey Max! Awesome work with this one—will definitely try to use it.

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michaelmior
Nice! Would be awesome if you could add Hacker News :)

~~~
mxstbr
I didn't know HN has a sharing link! Would you mind submitting an issue with
the link and I'll see if I can get to it? (or you submit a PR?)
[https://github.com/mxstbr/sharing](https://github.com/mxstbr/sharing)

~~~
michaelmior
Will do!

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Mithaldu
Just FYI: Your website needs a "doesn't work without JS" message, since right
now it looks pretty lol with JS off.

~~~
mxstbr
You're right, I should add that! PR maybe?
[https://github.com/mxstbr/sharing](https://github.com/mxstbr/sharing)

~~~
mobiuscog
It would be nice to have a variant of the site that didn't have javascript or
analytics.... like the buttons ;)

~~~
mxstbr
That sounds like a the perfect use case for a small API… Sharing Links as a
Service?!

~~~
nathan_f77
Haha, I was actually under the impression that you made this in response to
AddThis [1]. They basically do "sharing links as a service", plus analytics.
It's not such a bad idea, since they were recently bought by Oracle for $175
million.

[1] [http://www.addthis.com/](http://www.addthis.com/)

~~~
mxstbr
Damn son, maybe this IS a startup then. I revert my earlier comment![0]

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12212911)

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callmeed
This is cool–it should be a Jekyll plugin

~~~
mxstbr
I've never written a Jekyll plugin! How would one do that?

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zouhair
I have those blocked everywhere.

~~~
nathan_f77
I think these ones will not be blocked, because they don't use any JS, and
there's nothing to identify them as sharing buttons. Even the icons are
embedded as raw SVG tags.

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gggggg11111
I hate these buttons on news sites, they slow down page loads considerably

~~~
justusthane
That's the point...these ones don't.

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artur_makly
can someone make this a WP plugin? huge adoption potential -;)

~~~
mxstbr
Help us out on making that happen!
[https://github.com/mxstbr/sharingbuttons.io/issues/38](https://github.com/mxstbr/sharingbuttons.io/issues/38)

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abluecloud
why does mailto: open in a new window?

~~~
jasonkostempski
mailto links should be handled by your OS's default mail client. I just
realized mine opens Chrome even though I clicked it from Firefox and
Thunderbird should be my mail client anyway.

~~~
abluecloud
yes, they should be. and they are (Mail opens) - but my point is the link
opens in a new window which is blank, then brings up the Mail

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DyslexicAtheist
very cool, would be nice to support more icons including this site ;-)

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martinvd
This is amazing, thanks!

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timlyo
Funny how a website specialising in no JavaScript doesn't work without
JavaScript.

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jasonkostempski
Nice work! Now if you can just convince the world to use it.

I forget what it was, but I had the same idea while reading something on HN
about a month ago, however, since I don't have an account on any of those
services, I didn't bother trying to implement it. I was also a little
pessimistic that some services wouldn't even have simple links like that so
they could protect their interest in tracking, but it looks like they all have
something. The only downside I can think of is that the URLs might disappear
and a site owner would need to update their site to get sharing working again
(assuming a new link is available). But I can't imagine that happening too
often and it's not like anyone ever died because share buttons didn't work for
a minute.

~~~
mickmock
My idea was an app to send pictures to people, and having the app make it
disappear after 10 seconds. Didn't bother implementing it though ;)

