What Is A ShareThis Button?
How To Create And Use A ShareThis Button For Your, Small, Business Website
In the latest line of social networking "sharing buttons" comes the ShareThis button that allows your website (or blog) visitors to easily share (link to/promote) your current web page (or blog page) with many social networks. Good if that web page (or blog page) contains a useful article for example.
So if you wanted to share (promote) this very web page, for example, you would click on the above ShareThis button and then click on the relevant social networking icons(s) before clicking on the main SHARE button - You will need to sign into those social networks before continuing, but it does mean you can share to more than one social networking site at once! Simply click on more than one social networking icon before clicking on SHARE.
Fig 1.0 Write a message - Select social networking icon(s) - Sign into networks - Click on SHARE button
In the above example I am only sharing on Facebook. After clicking on the SHARE button (not shown here) you will then need to grant ShareThis facebook permission by clicking on the facebook security ALLOW button. Once you have done that the shared link (web page link) will then be placed on the social networking site(s) you selected earlier (above).
Fig 1.1 Click on the facebook security ALLOW button in order to grant access permission to ShareThis
Fig 1.2 The shared web page link has now appeared on my facebook page
In this example obviously the shared web page link went onto my own facebook page, but in normal circumstances it will be promoted on my visitors websites and blogs of course.
How To Create Your Own ShareThis Button
So now you know how the ShareThis button works, from a visitors/promoters point of view, I will now show you how to create a ShareThis button (from a website
developer's point of view).
You begin by going to the "Get Sharing Button" (Publisher) part of the ShareThis website - Here - and
then go through the necessary steps. For this example I will keep things simple by demonstrating the "normal" ShareThis button.
Step 1 requires you to select the type of site that the ShareThis button will go on. Either on a WEBSITE or BLOG.
Fig 1.3 Select the type of site that the ShareThis button will go on - WEBSITE or BLOG?
Step 2 requires you to select the type of ShareThis button. If you select the second button set for example you will have advanced features to play with, such as which social networking sites to add/remove, but to keep things simple just keep the standard button selected.
Fig 1.4 Select the type of ShareThis button you require on your website or blog
Step 3 requires you to choose a style for the widget (pop-up option window - Fig 1.0 above) - Either CLASSIC or OAUTH. Again, to keep things simple just leave the default (standard) OUTH WIDGET option selected (Fig 1.5 below) and then click on the GET THE BUTTON button to continue. Doing so will then display a Registration Form (Fig 1.6) whereby you need to supply your website's or blog's URL (address) in order to get the actual code - This is needed because the script (code) needs to know what website or blog address to insert into the code. Registration is also FREE.
Fig 1.5 Leave the OAUTH WIDGET option selected and then click on the GET THE BUTTON button
Fig 1.6 Fill in the Registration Form and then click on the REGISTER button
Don't forget to click on the, stupidly, tiny I AGREE... tick box if you want a stress free life. YES! I hate filling out forms too, especially when they do stupid things to frustrate me!!
COPY & PASTE The Button Code
With the button preferences and account registration details out of the way it's now time to copy and paste the code. The code is split in two parts. The first
part (highlighted in the bottom box) should be placed between your HTML <head> and </head> statements (commands) and the second part (faded in the
top box) should be placed after the HTML <body> statement (command).
To COPY the first part of the code simply click inside its box to highlight it and then right click over the highlight to bring up the Options menu. From there,
left click on the COPY menu-item and then PASTE the code inside your HTML web page. Do exactly the same for the second part of the code. You should end up with
something like the following.
Fig 1.7 COPY these codes and then PASTE them into your web page
Fig 1.8 Part 1 - PASTE this code between your HTML <head> and </head> statements (commands)
Fig 1.9 Part 2 - PASTE this code after your HTML <body> statement (command)
You now need to do exactly the same as above for each web page you want a ShareThis Button on. The code itself will know the URL (address) of the web page it is on
and therefore create the necessary, correct, link for the share widget (pop-up window) so that your "promoter" visitors will be sharing (promoting) the correct link
(web page).
For more advanced button options, as mentioned in Step 2 above, simply experiment by create another button from within the ShareThis website. You will need to be
logged into your ShareThis account, but once logged in you can create more buttons and so on.