Kadence Simple Share

A counter at zero works against you

A freshly published article, a row of buttons and a zero next to each one. The reader does not see an invitation to share: they see that nobody has done so yet. On a new blog or a store with few visitors, that number can stay low for a long time, and what was meant to build trust ends up taking it away.

Kadence Simple Share solves this the short way: it shows no counter at all. It adds sharing icons to posts, pages and products, with no third-party counts and no external tracking APIs. Sharing still costs one click, and the public figure disappears.

That decision has a flip side worth accepting before you install it. If your site already has thousands of shares and uses that figure as social proof, you will not be able to display it here.

Twelve networks, and why you need not enable them all

The available list is this: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Tumblr, VK, StumbleUpon, Email, Pinterest, Reddit, XING and WhatsApp. Each one is enabled by dragging it from the disabled column to the enabled column, so the selection and order are in your hands.

The list mixes networks with very different uses. WhatsApp and Email send something to one specific person; LinkedIn and XING aim at a professional audience; Pinterest runs on images. Choose according to where your audience is and leave the rest off: Digg and StumbleUpon, for example, deserve a check before they take a place in the row.

Bluesky, Threads and Telegram are not among the twelve. If your audience shares there, look at the alternatives further down.

Where the icons go and how they look

• Placement: before the content, after it, both, fixed left, fixed right, fixed bottom or none.
• Mobile placement: set separately from the desktop one.
• Enabled areas: blog posts, excerpts, pages, products and portfolio, if your site has one.
• Appearance: five styles, normal or large size, transparent background, alignment and optional text before the icons.
• Popup tooltips: on or off, with their own alignment and text before the network name and the email label.
• How the link opens: in a small popup window or in a new tab.
• Pinterest: one option forces the featured image to be the only image shared.
• Shortcode: [kadence_simple_share] inside a Shortcode block, for custom post types or anywhere else.

What these buttons will not do for you

There are no counters, per network or in total, and that is the product's starting point.

Its features also do not include share statistics, buttons to follow your profiles or automatic posting to networks. It places the button and opens the relevant network; whatever the visitor does next happens away from your site.

Enabling networks and placing the icons

This is an additional plugin from the Kadence family. If your site uses another theme, try it on a copy first. These are the steps:

1. Install and activate the plugin.
2. Drag to the enabled column only the networks your audience uses.
3. Pick a style and size by looking at the preview of each style.
4. Set the desktop and mobile placements, and tick the areas where you want the icons.
5. Open a post and a product on a phone and check that the icons cover nothing.

When another sharing plugin suits you better

If you do want counters, Novashare shows single and total counts from networks such as Pinterest, Reddit and Buffer, weighs under 3.2 KB on the front end and includes a floating bar, image hover pins and Click to Post blocks.

At the other extreme, with more networks and more placements, Easy Social Share Buttons supports over 50 networks, 27 predefined placements and real-time or cached counters.

Questions before you enable the buttons

Does it show how many times a page has been shared?

No. It has no share counters.

Does it work on store products?

Yes. Products are one of the areas you can enable, along with posts, excerpts and pages.

Can I put the icons on a custom post type?

Yes, with the [kadence_simple_share] shortcode inside a Shortcode block.

Can I have a different placement on mobile?

Yes. The mobile placement is configured separately.

Are Bluesky or Telegram included?

They are not among the twelve available networks. Novashare includes both.