Yearly Archives: 2016

WordPress: moving from Server/Domain A to Server/Domain B

Whether you are building a Website or a WordPress Blog from scratch, or ‘just’ re-designing an existing one, it can be quite handy to first work on a development environment – that is a ‘not live’ environment – so you can tinker and twist your code as you like, without anybody else noticing it. Running a development environment under a subdomain is common practice and most of the hosting providers offer tools that make it easy to set up such a subdomain on your own webspace. When everything looks fine, all plugins are in place and everything seems to work well it’s time to move to the live environment.

But how do you move your WordPress Website to a new Server / new Domain?

Already a while ago I was writing about the basic concepts of moving a WordPress Blog from one domain to another. But that post was really more about the underlying ideas of moving a WordPress installation – and not so much about the actual process.

In this article I want to take a closer look at the actual process of moving from one web space to another – and also take a look at three WordPress plugins that can make that process a lot easier.

Standard Export-Import in WordPress

WordPress has some built in export- and import.functionalities that can already help moving a website from one webspace to another. One big disadvantage of this method: plugins or media will not be moved. And if you also want to change the actual domain name, you will have to adjust or repair the links of your pages and articles. This is nor very practical when moving a large website, but can be ok when you’re just dealing with some small portfolio website or the like.

Plugin #1: Akeeba Backup

The Plugin Akeeba compiles a  Backup of the complete website project – including all files and directories and of course including the database. Depending on the size of your project the moving can be done in a matter of minutes.

Since July 2015 the plugin is however not listed on WordPress.org any more. As far as I know there was some debate about the features of the free version, that used to be available on wordpres.org.

There is of course still a free version available – and it’s probably the most convenient if you check the features list yourself, in case you are interested: akeebabackup.com/download/backup-wordpress.html

Plugin #2: Duplicator

Another free option would be the WordPress plugin called Duplicator which seems to be quite popular – at least if you check the numbers and comments/reviews at wordpress.org. From the plugin page: “The Duplicator gives WordPress administrators the ability to migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another. The plugin also serves as a simple backup utility.

Wordpress Duplicator: "duplicate, clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one location to another"

WordPress Duplicator: “duplicate, clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one location to another”

The setup of Duplicator can look a bit complicated at first sight. The plugin works with the metaphor of packages. Create a new package to get started.

You might first have to fix some permissions – 777 will do temporarily. The plugin then has a look at your database and will list all the tables it can find. So if you happen to have anything else stored in the same database, it will list also those tables – for example PiWik. You will probably exclude those tables from the backup since including them might bloat you database file without adding much useful data.

Sounds promising? It is promising You may download the free version of the plugin right here: wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator

Plugin #3: WP Clone

Also the plugin WP Clone lets you move a website from one web server to another – or from a local install to a web server. You will first have to install the plugin on the source and the target installation. In the admin panel of the source install you then choose ‘export’ and save the backup file locally. On the new location you then need to choose ‘import’ and upload the backup file.

But be aware: importing the backup file will reset your WordPress installation. It seems that some users were not aware of this – but this is a feature, not a bug. And also be aware of the following disclaimer: “WP Clone fails in 10-20% of installations. As such it is NOT intended as a regular backup method, its strength consists in migrating WordPress installations. The failures appear to be related to the multiplicity of WordPress hosting platforms and the size of the installation rather than the WordPress version“.

You can donwload the plugin WP Clone by WP Academy through wordpress.org right here: wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clone-by-wp-academy

Conclusion: the above plugins are mainly designed for cloning and moving a complete WordPress website / WordPress blog. They are however not meant to be used for backups. If you are looking for a complex but easy to use solution to move a WordPress Installation, either of the above plugins can come handy. I would however still recommend to do it ‘manually’ by moving the database and the files and plugins separately.


Need support designing, installing or moving a website? I would be glad to help. You can contact me through the contact page.

Avoid 404 errors – find broken links and repair them

When you are building a new website from scratch, all links should of course first work just fine. There is basically now reason – or let’s rather say no excuse for broken links in a fresh setup. All internal and external links should be checked and there should be not a single broken link on a fresh install.

When you are instead moving moving or even relaunching a website, things are quite different. Chances are that sections have changed, URLs are different – or some small pages may be combined to one larger page. Then you should try to ‘save’ potentially valuable links, for example by redirecting them properly trough 301-redirects inside the .htaccess file of your website. But these are not the subject of this article.

Why Website-Care / Website-Maintenance is important

In this post I want to look at websites, that have been up and running for a longer time period. Articles and pages have been added over the years, internal and external links have been set. The problem is: over the years URLs may have changed, pages may have been deleted. Some of your links may be outdated – the number of broken links is slowly but surely rising.

You may first not realize you have a problem. But while the number of broken links is rizing, your website’s reputation may drop. Both users and search engines don’t like dead links at all. Dead links are bad for UX and bad for SEO.

And even if it does not appear to be a problem at first sight, because ‘nobody’ is looking at your old articles anyways… Well – the reason why nobody is actually looking at those old articles might be the high number of broken links.

So both for UX and for SEO it is a good idea to have a closer look at you website from a spider’s point of view and check all those precious links you once set. I don’t like the term myself, but let’s call it Link-Checking. But this can be a lot of annoying and (even worse) time consuming clicking, right? Of course there are some friendly bots or actually spiders that can do the job for you.

Link-Checking: how to find broken links and avoid 404 errors

First things first:

  • Link-Checking is done best by some bot / spider / app – not manually. Even if your website is that that large, it may take hours or even days to actually find and check every link you once set. And chances are that you will not even find every dead link.
  • Link-Checking is best done from ‘outside’. Consider Link-Checking something like an automatic site critique – and the best critics are often not the once that are running the system. So even if you CMS is capable of checking links, you are probably better off with an external service.
  • TLDR / my favorite free service at this moment: deadlinkchecker.com

WordPress Plugin: Broken Link Checker

As far as I know there is currently only one WordPress Plugin that is capable of finding and listing broken links on your “WordPress) website: the Broken Link Checker. One disadvantage jumps right into my face: the Broken Link Checker can currently not check sidebars / widgets for broken links. This non-feature make the plugin actually useless for my use case.

Additionally the plugins has received quite some negative ratings for being resource hungry. There seems to be a serious performance problem when checking larger websites for dead links, up to server unavailability – the server might just not accept any further requests, shuts down, gives an error 500. Something I would not want to see on my website.

If you want to test the plugin anyways you’ll find it here: wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker

Find dead links with Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Cross-Platform Program)

First the good news about the program Screaming Frog SEO Spider: the paid version seems to be a really complex application that enables you to do much more good for your website than just link checking. And it is available for Mac OS, Windows and Linux. The bad news: the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider is almost useless.

I have downloaded and installed the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider and tried what you can actually do with it. It is a stand alone application and you could basically use one license to check any number of websites ‘from the outside’. The only draw back is that you can only check one URL at a time. So if you only want to check your links page, it may be worth installing the free version. But if you want to check more URLs, then the free version is just not an option.

The paid version appears to be a mighty chunk of software – a SEO suite for professionals that regularly need to perform various tests on a number of websites. To me this is a bit over the top – and with a price tag of $99 per year it is just a bit too expensive for my rather basic needs.

If you want to test the program and/or download the free version: screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider

Find broken links with integrity (Mac OS Stand Alone Program)

The program integrity from Peacockmedia is a beautiful little piece of software. The interface design is cleanand compact and analyzing links is basically possible within the free version of the tool. You just need to enter the URL of the website you want to analyze and then it will take a few minutes until the tool has analyzed the website for broken links.

You can then get a list of all links – or just all broken links, responsible for the  404 errors. The sorting and filtering options of integrity lets you filter the results by response / error message.

One draw back: the tool will only list linked websites and pages – but not other files like JavaScript or webfonts and the like. Also feeds (RSS/XML) are not listed. So while the tool is actually quite good in giving a quick and direct answer to the question, what links are causing 404 errors, the tool is not good for a deep analyzes of all links assets.

You can find the tool here: peacockmedia.software/mac/integrity

Online Service: Link-Checker by w3.org

Next I took a look at the official link checker tool by w3.org. First a few advantages: the tool is free to use, no registration needed, no fees, no fuss. And the tool is a serious link checker: it basically checks everything it can – and that may take time.

Disadvantages: it can take quite a while until the link checker tool has analyzed a website for broken links. No doubt, the spider does its job well – but for my taste it does its job just a bit too well. So for a first test it could be a good idea to check the “Summary only” option. In some cases people report that the tool made their webserver break down – and you don’t want to get an error “500” looking for “440” errors.

If you want to test the tool anyways: validator.w3.org/checklink

Online Service: Dead Link Check

The Dead Link Check is another free online tool that lets you search your website for broken links. You just need to enetr the URL – then a CAPTCHA check. The the tool statrs analyzing…

After about 2500 pages you may get another CAPTCHA check – and if you have a large website to analyze, you may get more CAPTCHA checks on the way. In the end you get a listing of all problematic pages.

The link report does also list broken links to assets like JavaScript files, CSS files, webfonts and the like. This can come very handy since the options of finding broken links to assets are otherwise limited. For example: I head to learn that one WordPress plugin was generating feeds for a custom post type – but the feeds were not accessible. This led to literally hundreds of broken links, probably only visible to search engines. The solution to fix those broken links is documented in this forum post. Without the link checking I would probably have never found out that I had a problem in the first place.

Here is the tool: deadlinkchecker.com

Favorite Tool: Online Broken Link Checker

Also the Broken Link Checker is a free online tool. Running the broken link analyzer can take some time – but in the end it does pay off.

The Broken Link Checker is probably a bit faster than the Dead Link Check. The report is however not as detailed, but still it is a good option to run a test every now and then. It does its job.

Here is the tool: brokenlinkcheck.com

…well then… Happy Link-Checking! :)

Email “Domain availability notice” – what to do?

When you own a domain, chances are that every now and then you will receive an email with the subject “Domain X availability notice”. Sometimes there is also the domain name in the subject line “Domain X” and the sender sometimes is named “Domain Available Info” or the like.

And sometimes there are even several emails coming in, all from different “experts” that are basically just trying to make you buy some additional domain name from them. But is it all ‘just’ spam?

In most cases the suggested domain name “Domain X” is close to a domain name you already own – either the ending or some other detail is different, the rest looks pretty similar to your own domain. For example I recently had an offer for “cpu20.info” which is pretty close to the domain “cpu20.com”. But what should one do in such a case?

“ I just wanted to let you know that domain EXAMPLE is now/soon available again and we are brokering the sale. Since you have a related domain name we thought you might have some interest in this one? „

In most cases these services are professional domain brokers – sometimes also called Domain Grabbers.

What are Domain Grabbers? Are they allowed to do what they do?

If you are like me, your first reaction may not be the most positive. Basically domains should only be registered by people, companies and institutions, that have a direct interst in the domain name. That’s at least what the guidelines of the Internic say – the central registration authority. But still Domain Grabbers do register domains names just for later selling them for a much higher price. Such practice is possible, but from a legal point of view at least questionable. Practically there is very little one can do against such practice.

Often Domain Grabbers simply “catch” domains that are about to “fall”. If the previous owner has no further interest in his/her domain name, the domain name would normally expire and then be freely available. Catching a falling domain will register the domain right the moment it becomes available. And that makes it almost impossible for ‘normal’ prople to register a domain that once was registered.

What can you do?

There are basically just three options, what you can do, when you are offered such a domain name:

  1. Hire a Domain-Grabber
    You really want to own the domain that was offered to you? It may hurt both financially and morally, but one way to get hold on that domain is to actually hire a/the Domain Grabber. Depending on the service and on the domain you might have to pay a fee ranging from a couple of hundreds to whatever you are willing to pay. Good luck!
  2. Register the Domain Name yourself
    You can of course also hope that you are either quicker than the Domain Grabber, or that the service has no interest in registering the domain themselves. All you have to do is wait and see if the domain becomes available. In this case I would recommend not to answer – not even to click on any link provided in any of the emails you received by that service. Any action can be interpreted ‘positive interest’ which might make the Domain Grabber actually grab the domain. This tactic can work out, but it can of course also go wrong. Good luck!
  3. Register an Alternative Domain Name
    This is the easiest and cheapest option, in case you really want an additional domain name that is close to the one you already have. This may feel a bit frustrating in the beginning, but once you get over the ‘lost’ opportunity, you might even like your very own choice better than the one offered to you by some domain service. The success of a website / the search result positioning can of course also be influenced by the domain name itself – but in the end it’s the content, that matters. And additionally you may get a good feeling not having fed a system that is at least questionable. If nobody would feed the domain grabbers, their business idea simply would not work.

Update: In an actual case I just managed to stay patient – and then actually register the very same domain name that was first offered to me / my client by a “domain service”. We first discussed the above options and then decided to wait. And in the end it paid off. Yay!

WooCommerce SEO: change the default shop title ‘Products Archive’ to something meaningful

WooCommerce SEO: How to change shop title Product Archive

WooCommerce SEO - how to change the shop title - Photo: screenshot / montage by T.Bortels/cpu20.com

As you may already know, WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin – and for many website owners it has basically become the standard e-commerce solution – an affordable and rather easy to set up way to run an online shop.

The combination of WordPress and WooCommerce enables you run an online shop with relatively little time and money invested. You basically just need to install WordPress and the free e-commerce plugin WooCommerce and in a few minutes you could have an online shop up and running. But then you would probably want to get some details straight – and that be get a little complicated.

One of the details you should actually get straight from the very beginning (or at least  sooner or later) is the title that is displayed in the title bar of your browser when visiting the archive pages – that is the category pages your new WooCommerce powered shop. Often the importance of the title bar can be overseen – but it is an important SEO factor. At least when you bookmark your shop or see it listed in a search engine results page (SERP) you’ll probably see why it is so important. The content of the title bar is basically what a potential client sees even before he/she visits your shop.  So I would even like to call it the most important – or at least one of the most important details to get straight if you want to run a successful online shop. And since category pages / archive pages often rank rather well, and  people are often searching for such categories, the archive titles are a good start. Depending on the theme you use, you might also see “Products Archive” as the title for your shop page. Not very search engine friendly – not very customer friendly.

WooCommerce SEO 101 – get the title straight first

With many shop themes, in case you don’t change anything to the default settings, the new landing page of your shop – your store front page will first have the default title “Products Archive” – and I suppose you don’t really like that. And you may also want to change the title if ‘only’ the category pages have the “Archives” in the title. At least search engines and potential customers will not find that title very useful information. If you would leave the title as it is, you would waste a great SEO potential.

Chances are that you first don’t even realize that the page has this standard title. The WordPress/WooCommerce interface lets you change the page title – and so you may have the impression that everything is ok as it is. But the title that is shown in the browser bar and will then also be shown in the search results is probably still the default title.

Changing the WooCommerce-Shop-Title “Products Archive“ with Yoast

The SEO plugin Yoast lets you change the title with a few clicks to something more meaningful. Basically every merchant should sooner or later think about search engine optimization (SEO) and the free version of Yoast is a good start. So you better install that plugin now, if you haven’t already installed it anyways.

Wordpress Woocommerce SEO Shop TitleTo change the title you have to first click on SEO in the left side menu of your admin section. Then navigate to “SEO > Titles & Metas“. On that oage you should see a tab “Post Types”. Click on it, then scroll down all the way to the section “Custom Post Type Archives” where you can change how the default title for archive pages of custom post types (shop articles) is constructed. Now you can for example enter the name of your shop directly into that field – something like “Buy myStuff Online” or the like. I suppose you get the idea :) and Bob’s your uncle.

WordPress as a CMS: Page Management Plugins (CPT)

WordPress CMS – Page Management Plugins

WordPress CMS – Page Management Plugins – Photo/montage: T.Bortels/cpu20.com

When using WordPress as a CMS, the blog functionality can become less important than the handling of static pages. And I mean lots of pages. If you are using WordPress as a CMS for a while, you could be dealing with hundreds or even thousands of pages. And it is probably quite common that there are also additional Custom Post Types (CPT) to be managed. So things can become a bit difficult

With one of my current projects I ran into the situation that I would have a couple of thousand pages in a hierarchical tree – all Custom Post Type (CPT) pages. The built-in page management is not really practical in such a situation, so I was looking at some plugins to help me out.

Usually first everything works fine. But the more pages you have, the more tricky managing those pages can become. This is even more the case, when you are dealing with hierarchical pages. Chances are sooner or later the built in page management doesn’t really work anymore and you would want to have plugin that helps you managing your to help me out managing the pages.

In the past years different WordPress developers have built a number of plugins that are intended to be helpful when dealing with a large number of pages. Some seem to do their job ok, some don’t. I have done some research: I had a closer look at 5 of the probably most popular plugins and I found a combination that kind f works for me. Here’s the details:

Plugin #1: Admin Collapse Subpages

The Plugin Admin Collapse Subpages does not help me at all. All it does is add an option to the standard pages list to collapse parent-child pages. The problem is, that the collapse-option  applies to the pages that are listed on the default list. So if you happen to have 50 child pages on your first parent page, you won’t see the next parent page. Sorry, but this plugin seems to be useless – at least for my use case.

Plugin #2: Advanced Page Manager

The second Plugin I had a closer look at was  Advanced Page Manager. At first sight the plugin looks really promising. But soon after the installation process I realized I couldn’t use this plugin either – the plugin does not support Custom Post Types (CPT).  So if you happen to have the need to manage a large number of regular parent-child pages, you may want to have a closer look at Advanced Page Manager.

Plugin #3: Swifty Page Manager

At first the Plugin called Swifty Page Manager does make a very good impression. it looks well designed, clean and easy to use. Parent pages can be expanded and collapsed, new child pages can be added directly inside the list view in the admin section and you can even choose the template you want to use. The list view does even show the little green / yellow / red light, provided by the SEO plugin Yoast. Greatness.

Wordpress Page Management with Swifty Page Manager

UI of Swifty Page Manager

For my use case however I could not use the plugin, since currently the plugin does not know how to handle Custom Post Type pages. And according to the developers there seems to be not much hope for CPT users: “there are no plans for adding custom post types at this point“. Not so great.

But I do have actually some hope: the plugin is (of course) released with an Open Source License – and the developers are actually encouraging others to help further develop this plugin and add missing functionalities. We’ll see if that turns out right at some point in the future.

Plugin #4: CMS Tree Page View

Next on the list is the plugin CMS Tree Page View. This plugin enables you to manage actually quite complex page trees. Even with a couple of thousand pages the plugin still works comfortably smooth. AJAX requests only load the details you currently need. Child pages are only loaded when the parent page is expanded – loading time and file size are ok.

Wordpress-Plugin CMS Tree Page View

CMS Tree Page View

The page listing is quite reduced and may look a bit like a 90ies computer interface: very small grey folder icons stand for parent folders, very small grey document icons stand for child pages. Reminds me a bit of  “Windows Explorer” that would let you organize folders and documents on your PC in the mid-nineties.

The Plugin does actually support Custom Post Types – a feature that was quite important to me.

Parent pages and child pages can be re-arranged by Drag’n’Drop – but that can turn out to be a bit difficult. Folders are constantly expanding once you move some page near a parent page. You may have to try a couple of times before you hit the right spot “between” to folders.

Plugin #5: Nested Pages

The user interface of Nested Pages is very clean and almost beautiful. And the Plugin is also capable of handling CPT pages. Clearly two strong arguments pro Nested Pages. And this is also why I first enjoyed using the plugin.

Wordpress Plugin WP Nested Pages

WP Nested Pages

Also Nested Pages indicated the SEO-ranking of Yoast directly in the page listing – another feature that would come handy.

But there is also a great disadvantage: Nested Pages seems to load all the pages, before it displayed the page tree. This can be very comfortable when you’re dealing with only some dozens of pages – but it clearly does not work well with a couple of thousand pages. Or actually it does work, but the overall handling becomes just very slow.

WordPress as a CMS – Page Management Plugins roundup / TLDR

If Nested Pages would load child pages through AJAX, this would be my favorite plugin to handle large / complex CPT page trees. But unfortunately it does not – and the more pages I add, the less I find the plugin useful.

At the moment I use the plugin CMS Tree Page View. You could actually run both plugins at the same time – so maybe I will use CMS Tree Page View for managing CPT pages and Nested Pages for checking the SEO status of my pages from time to time. We’ll see.

Basically there is just one more thing to add: all of the tested plugins can be activated and deactivated as you like. So you can actually try them out yourself and see what’s best for your project.

PS: You have some additional / alternative suggestion?
Please feel free to leave a comment below… Thank you!

How to check your WordPress Version easily

Sometimes you want to install a new theme or upgrade a plugin and then you might be wondering – what wordpress version is my website actually running on? When did I update the last time? Is the theme / the plugin compatible to the version I use?

You may also need your WordPress version when you are about to post a support request or want to implement a custom function / a custom functionality yourself.So knowing where to actually find the version can came in handy every now and then.

Check your WordPress Version in the Administration Dashboard

The easiest way to check the WordPress version of a WordPress powered website is when you login to your administration interface. The newer versions print out the version number in the bottom right corner – for example “ Version 4.4.1″.

Check your WordPress Version online from the readme.html file

You can of course also find out the WordPress version without beeing logged in. A standard wordpress installation will put a file readme.html in the root folder of your WordPress directory. This file is also updated automatically with every update you run. You can then easily open that file in your browser and check the version from there: mydoman/readme.html

How to check my WordPress Version online

Check your WordPress Version online: readme.html

One should however at least mention, that some experts think that keeping the readme.html file online is a potential security risk. Hackers could take advantage of the information provided through that file – so in some forums it is actually recommended that you should delete the readme file after a successful instalation or update.

I won’t stress too much about it for two reasons: First of all, you should always keep your WordPress website up to date – and take measures to make it difficult to actually hack your site. And on the other hand most of the attacks are probably automated attacks anyways. I don’t think that any hacker would actually take the time to check the readme file.

Check your WordPress Version with a line of PHP / a WordPress-Function

WordPress has a secific function that can provide additional information about your current installation: get_bloginfo(). This is probaly mostly intersting for theme developers and other coders, but can also come handy for designers. You could for example use this function to dynamically check the compatibility of a theme or a plugin against the current version.

Besically the function looks like this:

 <?php $bloginfo = get_bloginfo( $show, $filter ); ?> 

The parameter $show determines as what details should actually be shown – and with $filter  you can determine, how it should be shown.  es angezeigt werden soll. For a simple version check the following code snippet should work just fine:

<?php 
    $wordpress_version = get_bloginfo('version'); 
    echo("Wordpress Version: ".$wordpress_version);
?> 

So if you implement this function for example inside a temple, you will find your WordPress Version printed in that template.

Feel free to find out more about get_bloginfo(); in the WordPress Codex:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_bloginfo

What’s the use of using Social Media Buttons?

Recently a client asked my at add “these little buttons” to his website, shortly before it was about to go online. I basically advised him not to add any Social Media Buttons to his website – he reacted a bit surprised.

So I actually had to explain my recommendation not to add Social Media Buttons to him – which first was not really easy. And in the end it is probably equally difficult to aswer the question why you would want to add those buttons in the first place. What is the great advantage of using Social-Media-Buttons? Who is benefiting from those buttons? What are the actual advantages of of using Social Media Buttons – and what are the disadvantages?

Advantages of using Social Media Buttons

disadvantages of using Social Media Buttons

Popular Social-Media-Buttons with built-in counters

First you’ll have to acknowledge that Social Media Buttons are in fact very popular. Looking around the internet you may get the impression that almost every website offers at least some kind button-set visitors can use to share or like articles by just clicking some button. Buttons for sharing content on Twitter, Facebook and Google+  seem to be almost some type of obligation. And the potential benefit appears to be quite tempting: one click, and your article could go viral. New visitors, new readers, more clicks – who wouldn’t want that for his/her precious website? And all for free? Kind of – at first sight integrating Social-Media-Buttons with your webdesign seems to be free of charge. But to me the price I would have to pay would still be to high.

Disadvantages of using Social Media Buttons

Already the word “free” makes me hesitate. How could such a valuable service be free? Usually there is a price to everything – and with free Social Media Buttons it’s just the same. The first thing you are basically ask to do is give away some of your precious web estate for free. Not only that you might have to adjust your layout to look good with the buttons – you most likely also put the logos of some of the largest company on display – for free.

Additionally using Social Media Buttons the weight and loading time of your website will increase. And even if those big company do have ultra fast servers and connection, the still will be additional images and/or scripts to be loaded.

And – last but not least – with some buttons you even also give away some of your users’ data – for free. And at least to me this is probably the most important argument against the use of “Like-Buttons”. Even if you actually do not give away any data automatically, because you use some sophisticated script to protect your users’ data, you still give the impression that you might give away user data.

One general misconception seems to be, that there would be no or at least less social sharing without the buttons. But basically everybody knows how to copy and paste a URL – and most of today’s smart phone have some kind of built-in functionality that allows users to share a website with one click. And this way, sharing a link manually, people are probably also more likely to actually add a personal comment to the shared link – and in my opinions this would then again add way more value to your website than any fully automatic “free” Social-Media-Button ever could.

see also: