WordPress-Plugin

The URL Sharing Plugin adds a text field with the post URL at the end of your posts – a qz.com like sharing approach. Additionally you get a button that enables copying the URL to the user’s clipboard. Look at the end of this post to see a live version of the plugin.

The plugin can be used as a more privacy-friendly alternative to sharing buttons or as an additional sharing-option. I was inspired by Dominik’s post about readability and usability on blogs (in German) who uses the Quartz-like approach – something I wanted to have, too.

Download

You have two options to get the code:

• Download URL Sharing plugin, version 1.1, as a zip-file
• Get it on GitHub

Installation

1. Upload the files in your plugins directory. Then activate it.
2. For a label in front of the URL and a text on the copy-to-clipboard-button, go to the settings page and insert your strings in the input fields. Of course, you can leave the label blank, the button, however, should have a call to action.

Change style

You can change the styling by adding your changes to stylesheet of the plugin. The URL Sharing plugin uses three CSS-elements:

• .url_share: div-container
• .url_share_label: label of the input field
• .url_share_input: input field
• .zeroclipboard-is-hover: hover status for copy-button
• .zeroclipboard-is-active: active status for copy-button

In the default version url_share_label and url_share_input don’t have values and therefore are using your theme’s style for label and input. Of course, you can change them just the way you want. For example: To change the color of the URL to red, add the following to the plugin’s stylesheet or your theme’s stylesheet: .url_share_input {color:red;}

To-do List

Things that might be considered in the future:

• Enable font color change of the URL in backend
• Offer a PHP-Snippet to enable more flexible positioning
• A button to automatically copy the URL to the user’s clipboard (by using an existing JavaScript library)Added with version 1.1 by using ZeroClipboard

Questions? Comments?

If you have any remarks and/or questions, feel free to leave a comment.