JNews - Social Share

The number beside your buttons is an editorial figure too

You publish a news story and a 2 appears next to it. Nobody did anything wrong, but that number tells the reader the article barely drew interest, right as they arrive. On a news site, a low visible count works like a bad review.

What you show on the share bar is an editorial decision, just like the headline. JNews Social Share, the sharing and counters add-on for the JNews theme, lets you decide whether that figure appears, from what value, and even which number it starts from.

That same freedom has a price: once you adjust the values, the counter stops working as an internal measure. To learn what really worked, check your analytics and treat the bar as a visible element only. It does not run on its own either, because it is installed from the JNews dashboard and its settings live inside the theme.

Visible networks and tucked-away networks

The buttons are split into two groups:

• Main network: it always appears on the share container, and you can add text to it.
• Secondary network: it stays hidden until the reader clicks the share button.

You can show all networks or only selected ones, and reorder them by dragging. Those added to the plugin include Xing, Bluesky, Threads and Weibo, plus options to send the article to ChatGPT and Perplexity AI for a summary. The Twitter setting sets the account for the "via @username" attribution.

Four positions, two of them with counter options

• Only Top: at the top only.
• Top + Bottom: at the top and bottom.
• Only Float: floating only, in a colored or monochrome style.
• Float + Bottom: floating and at the bottom.

There is one detail worth knowing before choosing: the options to show the share counter and the view counter appear with Only Top or Top + Bottom. With the floating positions, those options are not offered in the post settings. And the float style is chosen only with Only Float or Float + Bottom.

The global post position can be overridden on each article from its metabox, so a special feature can carry a different bar from the rest.

The settings that decide the figure

• Share threshold: the total appears only once it passes the number you set. This is the setting that avoids showing that 2.
• Initial views: sets a starting number for views, and also affects the share counts displayed.
• Shares based on views: calculates shares as a percentage of views.
• Likes based on views: does the same with likes.
• Override Fake Counter: sets views, shares, likes and dislikes by hand on a specific post.

The threshold only hides. The other four change what the public reads, so decide with your newsroom how far you want to go.

Separately, Select & Share adds the option of sharing selected text to single posts.

Turning it on inside the JNews dashboard

1. In JNews Dashboard, open Plugin and install and activate JNews Social Share & Counter.
2. Go to Customize Style, JNews : Social, Like & View, and then Social Bar, Like & View.
3. Choose the view counter script: you need JNews View Counter or Jetpack, and having both can cause malfunctions.
4. Configure the main and secondary networks and the Twitter account.
5. Create an app at developers.facebook.com for the App ID, App Secret and Access Token fields, the last one generated in Graph API Explorer.
6. Enable Select & Share in its section, if you want it.

If you do not use JNews or want another way to share

This add-on assumes the JNews theme. Outside it, Novashare is a lightweight sharing plugin focused on speed that shows single and total counts.

Counters and the plugins around it

Can I hide the counter when it has few shares?

Yes. With the share threshold, the total appears only after passing the figure you choose.

Is it required for JNews to work?

No. The only required plugin is JNews Essential; this is one of the included ones that add features.

Can I install JNews View Counter and Jetpack together?

Better not to: having both can cause malfunctions in both plugins. Pick one.