Social Media Share Bar for Jekyll blog/website

9 min read

Updated: April 7, 2020

Allowing users to share your articles on social media is a common blog/website feature. More share is equal to more eyeballs on your article. Shares will drive traffic to your blog/website and sometimes it may go viral. But, if you read a lot over the internet then you know how hard it is to share an interesting article with your friends if it doesn’t have a share buttons, so it is necessary to provide an option to share. In this article I show you how I added the social media share bar widget to this Jekyll website.

Here’s how it looks:

Social Media Share Bar for Jekyll blog/website

Currently, I’m using this social media share bar widget on my website, so you will see it at the end of this article.

Getting started

Adding a share bar to website is a really easy process when using special free services, but I’m a programmer and designer, so I had created the share bar by myself. To make it the Jekyll way, I did the share bar in a widget format. I call it a widget, since it can be reused. Now, step by step guide.

Create a widget

First of all, you’ll need to create a new HTML file inside the _includes catalogue and call it share-bar.html. Then place the following code to this file:

                                
<div id="share-bar">

    <h4>Share this:</h4>

    <div class="share-buttons">
        <a  href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=500,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Facebook" >
            <i class="fa fa-facebook-official share-button"> facebook</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text={{ page.title }}&url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=500,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Twitter" >
            <i class="fa fa-twitter share-button"> twitter</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="https://plus.google.com/share?url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=500,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Google+" >
            <i class="fa fa-google-plus share-button"> google</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=900,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Pinterest" >
            <i class="fa fa-pinterest-p share-button"> pinterest</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="https://www.tumblr.com/share/link?url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=900,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Tumblr" >
            <i class="fa fa-tumblr share-button"> tumblr</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="http://www.reddit.com/submit?url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=900,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on Reddit" >
            <i class="fa fa-reddit-alien share-button"> reddit</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url={{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}&title={{ page.title }}&summary={{ page.description }}&source={{ site.title }}"
            onclick="window.open(this.href, 'pop-up', 'left=20,top=20,width=500,height=500,toolbar=1,resizable=0'); return false;"
            title="Share on LinkedIn" >
            <i class="fa fa-linkedin share-button"> linkedin</i>
        </a>

        <a  href="mailto:?subject={{ page.title }}&amp;body=Check out this site {{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}"
            title="Share via Email" >
            <i class="fa fa-envelope share-button"> email</i>
        </a>
    </div>

</div>


                            

Note: The links are built using liquid code. They look for current page URL and insert it into the share link. So doesn’t matter where you place them, they will work.

Add to the theme

Now you have to hook up the share bar widget anywhere in your theme where you’d like to display the share bar. To display it at the end of each post just copy the following short code to your post layout file which will be inside the _layouts catalogue and are named post.html.

{% include share-bar.html %}

Note: This short code is just includes the contents of the share-bar.html file into this place.

Note: You can add this short code in any place of your theme: inside the post content, in the sidebar area, in the footer area and etc..

In my website theme I added this short code right after the {{ content }} line. Here is a snippet from my post.html file:

                                <div class="post-content" itemprop="articleBody">
    {{ content }}
    {% include share-bar.html %}
</div>

                            

Styling for the widget

You can style your share bar the same way you would style any other part of your blog/website theme. Use a style that suits your needs. I have styled the share bar with the following CSS code:

                                /* Share Bar */
#share-bar {
    font-size: 20px;
}

/* Title */
#share-bar h4 {
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    font-weight: 500;
}

/* All buttons */
.share-buttons {
}

/* Each button */
.share-button {
    margin: 0px;
    margin-bottom: 10px;
    margin-right: 3px;
    border: 1px solid #D3D6D2;
    padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px;
}
.share-button:hover {
    opacity: 1;
    color: #ffffff;
}

/* Facebook button */
.fa-facebook-official {
    color: #3b5998;
}
.fa-facebook-official:hover {
    background-color: #3b5998;
}

/* Twitter button */
.fa-twitter {
    color: #55acee;
}
.fa-twitter:hover {
    background-color: #55acee;
}

/* Google-PLus button */
.fa-google-plus {
    color: #dd4b39;
}
.fa-google-plus:hover {
    background-color: #dd4b39;
}

/* Pinterest button */
.fa-pinterest-p {
    color: #cb2027;
}
.fa-pinterest-p:hover {
    background-color: #cb2027;
}

/* Tumblr button */
.fa-tumblr {
    color: #32506d;
}
.fa-tumblr:hover {
    background-color: #32506d;
}

/* Reddit button */
.fa-reddit-alien {
    color: #ff4500;
}
.fa-reddit-alien:hover {
    background-color: #ff4500;
}

/* LinkedIn button */
.fa-linkedin {
    color: #007bb5;
}
.fa-linkedin:hover {
    background-color: #007bb5;
}

/* Email button */
.fa-envelope {
    color: #444444;
}
.fa-envelope:hover {
    background-color: #444444;
}

                            

Note: I have used only the official colours for the social media icons.

You can add this CSS code to your Jekyll theme stylesheet file (it maybe a _layout.scss file in the _sass catalog) or just add it to the end of the share-bar.html file that you maked in the first step of this tutorial, but in this case don’t forget to wrap it with the <style></style> tag. Alternative way is to create a file _sass/_share-bar.scss, and then import it in the style.scss file of your Jekyll website.

Add the Font-Awesome iconic font

In the social media share bar I have used an icons of social media and email from the Font-Awesome iconic font which is better than loading an image files localy or remotely. If your theme already have the buil-in Font-Awesome library then just go to next step of this tutorial.

If your theme doesn’t have a Font-Awesome library icluded then add the following code to the head section (right before the </head> tag) of your theme (it maybe a head.html file in the _includes catalog), or add it to the begining of the share-bar.html file that you maked in the first step of this tutorial:

                                <link href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

                            

Note: A good way to avoid the Font-Awesome library loading delay is to optimise the Font-Awesome library by removing all you not needed icons from it.

Add the Open Graph, Twitter Card Tags and Schema.org microdata

Finally, you may want to add some Open Graph, Twitter Card Tags and Schema.org microdata to your blog pages, this will create that pretty share dialogue and turn on the share tracking/analytics. You can test/validate this microdata here and here. Read about the Open Graph you can here, about the Twitter Card Tags here and about the Schema.org microdata here.

Conclusion

That’s it, you’re done. Now your blog/website will have the social media share bar at the end of each post, so visitors of your blog/website will be able to share any article that they liked on social media. So simple isn’t it?

This way I have added the social media share bar to my website. This is one of the reasons I love Jekyll, all things can be done simply by creating a small widget.

Now when you know how it works, share this article. Why not give these buttons a try before implementing on your blog/website? :)

If you were able to implement this on your blog/website then please leave a comment

Thanks for reading!

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