Really Simple SSL Social is a complete social sharing solution for your website. The plugin works like any other sharing plugin, with the added bonus of being able to recover “lost” likes after moving to SSL. The plugin currently supports the following social services: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Yummly and WhatsApp.
There are three ways to use this plugin:
- Recovery mode: likes for your current widget, which often works, but sometimes Facebook just shows the https likes anyway, whatever you do.
- Built in buttons: using the built in buttons enables the plugin to do the share retrieval over the API for both http and https, then showing these in the buttons.
- Hybrid: Use the social networks native sharing buttons with share counts retrieved from their respective API’s by Really Simple SSL Social.
Recovery mode features
The plugin is compatible with the following widgets/plugins:
- Facebook like button
- Jetpack social shares
- Add to Any
- Easy Social Share
- Shareaholic Update: Shareaholic now has its own recovery feature
- Add This
- AccessPress (note, a minor code edit is needed in the AccessPress plugin. If AccessPress does not apply this, you need to do this yourself.
- Sharif
Besides these, if the widget or plugin uses the original social code, it will work. Facebook can be a bit erratic when it comes to the number of shares it returns: sometimes the number of shares for https will be returned even when the http url is passed to Facebook. If that happens, there’s only one way to retrieve the original shares: by retrieving them directly through the Facebook api.
That is why we have added a native share buttons feature that is consistently recovering shares directly through the Facebook, Pinterest and other social media api’s.
Built in buttons features
In some situations the https likes are returned when the Facebook widget requests the likes for http. When this happens the only solution is to directly retrieve the likes through the Facebook API. As this won’t work with custom widgets (I can’t predict where or when the likes are inserted for other widgets), I have created a custom sharing buttons option.
These can be used instead of the sharing widget you currently use. Because the buttons are generated by the plugin itself, it can retrieve the likes itself. The plugin will retrieve both http and https likes for the url the buttons are shown on. This is a pretty stable method, as it is not dependent on other sharing widgets, and seems to bypass even the issue the native Facebook widget has with retrieving the correct likes.
Currently you have three options: a shortcode, you can place anywhere: rsssl_share_buttons, the option to append the buttons to each post, page, or any post type you want and the ability to add the share buttons as a Gutenberg block.
You can choose to show the buttons inline, at the bottom or top of a page, or as fixed sidebar on the left of the screen. Switching between the options can be done by changing the ‘Show buttons inline or as left sidebar’. The plugin currently contains six themes:
Color rounded
Color square
Dark round
Dark square
Both the color and dark themes are also available as a sidebar which looks like this:
Hybrid buttons
Besides these built-in buttons, you can choose to use the native sharing buttons with API retrieved counts. This allows you to use the social networks native buttons without losing your share count! This options looks like this:
Why are likes lost?
Because the social widgets consider https://domain.com as a completely different domain from http://domain.com, your likes that are registered to http://domain.com will be lost after the move to https.
Really Simple SSL social recovers likes by keeping the URL for the widget on http for the pages that were published before you activated this plugin, and will leave the data-href on https for newer posts. This way, your website will gradually move to https for your likes as well.
This plugin will only work in combination with Really Simple SSL, as it uses a filter defined by that plugin.
- A license allows to install and use Really Simple SSL social on a site for an unlimited period of time
- Flexible: recover shares for your current sharing tool, or choose the powerful built in sharing buttons
- Continuously developed: we’re adding new features continuously to improve your site security
- One year updates and support. To continue to receive support and updates, all licenses must be renewed after one year (not compulsory).
How to install the plugin
- The plugin can both be used as an add-on for Really Simple SSL and as a standalone plugin.
- Go to plugins, add new, upload. Upload the zip file you downloaded from really-simple-ssl.com.
- Install and activate.
- In settings/ssl/social you have now some more options:
A date option
The date should be entered in yyyy-mm-dd format. This is the date used as switch date between http and https. Posts published before this date will use the http domain for the likes, posts published after this date will use the https domain for the likes.
Enable recovery on the homepage
As a homepage is often not a page or post with a publish date, you can choose how to handle it separately
Use built in sharing buttons.
If you enable this option, you have sharing buttons which you can use instead of the ones you currently use, as it will insert buttons of its own. This enables the plugin to use its own method to retrieve the likes, for both http and https. The advantage is users will now add new likes to the https url as well, which is not possible with the other option. If you choose the custom sharing buttons, the other options won’t be needed, but you’ll get some new options. The most important one is the Facebook app token. First, create an app for your website:
https://developers.facebook.com/apps/
Then, get the app token from this page:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/accesstoken/
If you register on opensharecount.com, you can also retrieve your twitter shares. Just register your site, and the plugin can retrieve your shares.
Customization options
The built-in buttons can be completely customised by enabling the ‘Custom CSS’ option in the plugin settings. The custom CSS options allow you to add CSS to your buttons directly from the plugin settings.
The caching for a url is cleared on a click on a share button, and every hour, but you can disable caching adding define(‘rsssl_social_no_cache’,true);
to your wp-config.php.
- A license allows to install and use Really Simple SSL social on a site for an unlimited period of time
- Continuously developed: you get all new features that will be added in the future
- Fast: Smart caching for the shares guarantees fast loading of the built in buttons (if enabled)
- One year updates and support. To continue to receive support and updates, licenses must be renewed after one year (not compulsory)
- The license is renewed yearly at 30% discount and can be cancelled at any time
