In this video, we are going to take a look at the advanced settings for the ShareThis module. We'll configure the "Email" and "ShareThis" widgets to activate only when clicked, instead of hovered, and we'll configure the default tweet message, among other changes.

Advanced Settings

  • Go to "Configuration => Web services => ShareThis" (admin/config/services/sharethis)
  • Scroll down and click the "Advanced" vertical tab
  • Insert a publisher key (optional): (This is automatically filled by the module, and you don't need to do anything. If you already have a ShareThis account, you can enter your key here. For more information about the publisher key and how it is used, visit sharethis.com.)
  • [ ] Late Load (If this is checked, the ShareThis widget will only load after the webpage has completed loading. By default, it loads as soon as the browser encounters the JavaScript tag.)
  • Twitter Suffix: (Suffix @ModsUnraveled) (Twitter only: Anything entered in this field will be appended to the text portion of the tweet before the link. I'll show you what it looks like in just a minute.)
  • Twitter Handle: ModsUnraveled (We saw that by default the link in the tweet is followed by "via @sharethis". The handle you enter here will replace "sharethis".)
  • Twitter recommends: (I couldn't figure out what this did, so if you have any idea, please let me know and I'll update the video!)
  • [ ] Display ShareThis widget on hover (If checked, the email and share widgets are activated on hover. If unchecked, they are activated on click.)
  • [ ] Display count "0" instead of "New" (If we look at an article, you'll notice that instead of displaying a count, the text "New" is displayed. This is because it has not yet been shared. If you'd like it to display a "0" instead, enable this option.)
  • [x] Display short URL (If checked, a shortened URL is displayed in the share box. If unchecked, the full URL is displayed.)
  • CopyNShare (These options enable you to track the shares that occur when a user copies and pastes your website's URL or Content. It adds a #hashtag to the end of your URL in the address bar, or the text copied from your site. The stats for this can be seen in your ShareThis account. To demonstrate, I'll copy some text from an article and paste it into TextEdit. You'll notice the hashtag at the end. That is a dynamically assigned hashtag that allows ShareThis to report the data to your account."
    • [x] Measure copy & shares of your site's Content (This adds a hashtag to content copied from your site.
    • [ ] Measure copy & shares of your site's URLs (This adds a hashtag to the end of your URL in the address bar.)
  • Choose a widget type: [x] Multi-Post Widget (The Multi-Post Widget allows users to write a share post once, and publish it to multiple accounts at the same time. The Direct-Post Widget redirects the user to each platform when clicked. This means that they have to write a post for each account they would like to share to.)
  • (Save configuration)

Now, when we view an article, the Email and ShareThis buttons don't react until clicked, and when we click the Tweet button, we'll see the suffix we wrote, and that the Twitter handle at the end is @ModsUnraveled instead of @sharethis. I'll delete the suffix since it isn't really useful in this case, but I wanted to make sure you knew where it was used.