4 Social Sharing Modules for Drupal

4 Social Sharing Modules for Drupal

If you don't give your site visitors an opportunity to share your webpages, you're missing out on an opportunity for others to hear about your great content.

Drupal has several modules that allow you to add Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social buttons.

In this blog, we're going to introduce you to four different options for adding social sharing to your Drupal site:

• Service Links
• Social Share
• AddThis
• AddToAny

ServiceLinks Module

There are so many options available in this module, we could do a full blog on just this one. But this is about comparing so let's cover the basics.

1. Download and install https://drupal.org/project/service_links.
2. Enable the Service links module and at least one of the Service links services modules that shipped with this module. I enabled Widget services.
3. Configure at admin/config/services/service-links. This is where you decide the type of node that can be shared and if you want the links at the bottom of the node).
4. Select the widgets (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) here admin/config/services/service-links/services.
5. Configure widgets here admin/config/services/service-links/widgets.
6. If you want the buttons in a block, visit the blocks admin page and configure either/or the node block or the block designed to allow non-node pages to be shared.

AddThis Module

This module taps into the Addthis.com service. You don't need an account to make this work.

1. Download and install https://drupal.org/project/addthis.
2. Enable AddThis and AddThis Displays.
3. Configure at admin/config/user-interface/addthis. This is where you select the social network services you want to make available.
4. Add an AddThis field to the content types if you want the link to appear in the content type.
5. Manage the display to make the icons to show and hide the label.
6. If you want the buttons in a block, visit the blocks admin page and configure the AddThis block. This will share the non-node pages.

AddToAny Module

This module has the fewest options but it's easy to set up.

1. Download and install https://drupal.org/project/addtoany.
2. Enable AddToAny.
3. Configure for all content types at admin/config/system/addtoany. The screenshot shows the button in the Link variable but you can include where "Bookmark/Search ..." is located. This module does not appear to give you the option to choose which networks you want users to be able to access.
4. If you want the buttons in a block, visit the blocks admin page and configure the AddToAny block. This will share the applicable nodes and the homepage. It will not share non-node pages.

Social Share Module

I like the default buttons that come with this one.

1. Download and install https://drupal.org/project/social-share.
2. Enable Social Share.
3. Configure at admin/config/content/social-share.
4. Configure networks and label (if you want one) on each content type in the Social Share vertical tab.
5. If you check the box to make a block, it will be automatically placed in a region ... at least that's what happened in Bartik. It showed up in the Header region. Configure the block to set the networks. FYI, the block recognizes non-node pages.