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Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re-coded And Cleaned

January 27, 2012 by 83 Comments

Update: New version (v1.1.4) of the Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin released with more clean code and some added features. Download and check it out.

I had been long wondering how to implement/copy the social box of mashable.com and fortunately came across this post How to Add A Mashable Style Social Media Box to WordPress at WPKube.com by my friend Devesh. Devesh has always been a guy who is always updated about the latest plugins and themes across the blogosphere. Only then I came to know about the Easy Mashable Social Bar plugin released as a free resource by InspiredMagz which once activated actually adds a widget inside your WordPress installation. Without wasting much time, I quickly downloaded the plugin and tried it on a local wordpress installation to test out the functionality. Below are a few screenshots of the plugin in action.

easy mashable social bar Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re coded And Cleaned

Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin in Action

easy mashable social bar1 Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re coded And Cleaned

Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin - Widget Settings

Everything looked fine until I looked at the page source to see the output. This is one thing that I always do before adding a plugin and I would suggest everybody to make it a habit to look into the plugin output before you add it into your live site. It is also a good idea to look into the plugin source code if you understand PHP code and find if there is any malicious code injected into the plugin.

Now coming to the point, I found that the guys from InspiredMagz have tricked all their users and injected a couple of hidden links to their plugin. You guys must be thinking what is the harm in that as long as the plugin is not breaking your site functionality or design? For your information, according to Matt Cutts, you should not have any hidden links in your page source. He has written an excellent article here about Hidden Links on his Blog. Hidden links are taken negatively by the Google spiders and you might get penalized for that and might end up going down the search engine ladder. If you’re unlucky you might get SandBoxed as well by Google.

Here are the screenshots of the codes which are hidden:

easy mashable hidden link1 Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re coded And Cleaned

Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin - Hidden Code

easy mashable hidden link2 Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re coded And Cleaned

Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin - Hidden Code

As you can see in the above screenshots, the following code snippet is harmful and hidden. The heights of the div equals 0 and the font-size equals 0 is the reason for these hidden links.

<!--begin of social widget-->
<div style="margin-bottom:10px;">
<div id="inspiredmagz-mashable-bar" style="width:<?php echo $widgetwidth_id; ?>px;"> <!-- Begin Widget -->

<div class="fb-likebox" style="background: <?php echo $fbboxcolor_id; ?>;"> <!-- Facebook -->
	<iframe src="//www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo $facebook_id; ?>&amp;send=false&amp;layout=standard&amp;width=< ?php echo $fbwidth_id; ?>&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;font&amp;height=< ?php echo $fbheight_id; ?>&amp;appId=234513819928295" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:< ?php echo $fbwidth_id; ?>px; height:< ?php echo $fbheight_id; ?>px;"></iframe>
</div>
<div style="height:0px;"><a style="text-decoration:none; font-size:0px;border:0;" href="http://inspiredmagz.com/">Inspired Magz</a></div><div style="height:0px;"><a style="text-decoration:none; font-size:0px;border:0;" href="http://inspiredmagz.com/easy-mashable-social-bar-wordpress-plugin/">Easy Mashable Social Bar WordPress plugin</a></div>
<div class="googleplus" style="background: <?php echo $gpluscolor_id; ?>;"> <!-- Google -->
	<span>< ?php echo $recommend_id; ?></span><div class="g-plusone" data-size="medium"></div>
	<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
</div> </div></div>
<div id="get-inspiredmagz" style="background: #EBEBEB;border: 1px solid #CCC;border-top: 1px solid white;padding: 1px 8px 1px 3px;text-align: right;border-image: initial;font-size:10px;font-family: "Arial","Helvetica",sans-serif;">
      <span class="author-credit" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="<?php echo $footerurl_id; ?>" target="_blank" title="< ?php echo $footertext_id; ?>">< ?php echo $footertext_id; ?> »</a></span></div> <!-- End Widget -->
<div style="height:0px;"><a style="text-decoration:none; font-size:0px;border:0;" href="http://inspiredmagz.com/">Inspired Magz</a></div>

<!--end of social widget-->

Now, the intention of the guys at InspiredMagz was to get a lot of backlinks quickly; which is not wrong. But, the way they tried to accomplish it, is unethical, since users of their plugin would be linking to their site unknowingly and that is bad. Since InspiredMagz has put a lot of effort in writing the code, they really deserve a link back, but not in such a way. I strongly believe that the plugin authors should have left it upto the user whether to link back or not. Infact, they could’ve put their links visible and maybe ask the user to tweet about their plugin/ Google+ or maybe a Facebook like to remove the links. Even releasing a premium version without the links to their site would have been an ethical choice.

Just as I found this, I reported it to Devesh at WPKube and promised to re-release a new version, which would be free from these hidden links. Most of InspiredMagz’s code remains same in my version of the plugin with a few changes like:

  1. Removed LinkedIn code and replaced with Feedburner email subscription link.
  2. Added Google+ Add to Circles Small Badge at the top.
  3. Last but not the least, removed the hidden links icon smile Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin Re coded And Cleaned

Download Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin below

Download v1.1.3!
Download new Version v1.1.4!
Please click on the facebook like button if you find this plugin helpful.

I hope you will like this plugin and make use of it on your self-hosted wordpress blog to the fullest to get more subscribers and social engagement. Let me know if you find any bug or new features. I’ll try my best to add new features. I request all users who have downloaded this plugin from the InspiredMagz site to pull it down immediately and download my version to keep free from their hidden links. Guys, do this immediately as Google spiders are always indexing your site and finding these links.

@InspiredMagz: If you guys read this post, then please try to be ethical. There is no harm in promoting your links or even beg for backlinks. But putting your links hidden from users who appreciate your work and getting their sites penalized by Google is not the way to go. We all appreciate your efforts to code this plugin and would love more of such great plugins in future, but keep your plugins free from such hidden links.

Filed Under: Plugins Tagged With: , ,

Article by Prasenjit Haty

Visit Prasenjit's blog

My interests and hobbies are all centered around my Blog. Research on Affiliate Marketing and Online Businesses and always trying to explore new ways for it are a few of my favorite pastimes. You can connect with me on: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter


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Comments

  1. Irfan says:
    January 30, 2012 at 1:48 pm

    I too had noticed their links in source but had not given any importance as i had no idea about what consequences this may occur later. Thanks a ton to you who have discovered the tactics of the plugins owner. Thank you for the plugin!

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      January 30, 2012 at 10:38 pm

      Thanks Irfan for downloading the plugin and I am glad that you now know the consequences. I’ve replied to your email and I noticed that the plugin is working fine on your blog.

      Reply
  2. Jawad says:
    January 30, 2012 at 4:41 pm

    This seems to be a nice development. mashable plugin use to delay the loading time of the website. I am installing it on my blog now. Let see if its loading time is lower now or not.

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      January 30, 2012 at 10:40 pm

      I did not check any loading delay. As you can see that my blog has a page speed score of around 89-91 which varies on each page load. I did not find any difference after installing this plugin. Please report back if you notice any considerable changes in loading time.

      Thanks,
      Prasenjit.

      Reply
  3. Suraj says:
    January 30, 2012 at 6:35 pm

    Hi,
    Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. It helped me gain a lot of info.

    Reply
  4. Arsie says:
    January 30, 2012 at 6:55 pm

    Thanks for sharing this Prasenjit.. :)

    Reply
  5. Tushar says:
    January 30, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    If i use this plugin will it create Google authorship too ?

    Reply
  6. Jeet Dholakia says:
    January 30, 2012 at 3:17 pm

    Hello,
    Thanks for sharing this update.
    Downloaded the revised version by you guys.

    Reply
  7. William says:
    February 1, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    Hello Prasenjit,

    I LOVE the plugin! Brilliant work! However, the Google+ box is disconnected from the rest, as you can see here: http://seductionmadeeasy.com

    Do you know what I can do to fix it? Thanks and keep up the great work!

    William

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 1, 2012 at 10:00 pm

      Hi William,

      Thanks for installing the plugin. I am seeing that the height of the G+ badge div has become 98px for you. Is there any other css which is interfering? Do not add any styling to the badge. Just let it to the default values.

      Let me know if that works.

      Thanks,
      Prasenjit.

      Reply
      • William says:
        February 1, 2012 at 10:24 pm

        Hey Prasenjit,

        I’m not sure about other css interfering. I’m not very good with code. I have a guy who normally does that for me but he’s on vacation. The only thing I did was change the sizes in the widget panel (but there’s no option for Google+ size). Maybe it’s something to do with the template? I’m not sure.

        Reply
        • Prasenjit says:
          February 2, 2012 at 12:37 am

          I’m sure that you’re doing something wrong. Did you add only your Google+ page id (103926791910538024435 in your case) in the appropriate fields?

          Can you give me access to your wordpress installation to look into it? If yes just send me an email with your credentials and I’ll be happy to look into it.

          Thanks.

          Reply
  8. kalyan says:
    February 3, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    Wonderful plugin Prasenjit. You pointed out right that we must not have hidden links at all. Thanks for sharing this. I got a couple of questions regarding this plugin.

    How can I remove options from the box, such as I dont want G+ at the bottom; how to remove this options.

    I don’t want FB faces. How to disable this?

    This will be highly appreciative if I get the resolutions.

    Thank you

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 3, 2012 at 10:20 pm

      Thanks Kalyan for your comment. For the options that you want, I’ll have to re-code it and release it in another version which is definitely a very good idea. I’ll do it soon. Otherwise, you’ll have to hack the code yourself if you know PHP.

      Best,
      Prasenjit.

      Reply
      • kalyan says:
        February 3, 2012 at 10:28 pm

        “you’ll have to hack the code yourself if you know PHP”.. lol for me.. I am not as good as you man.. just a little bit of PHP knowledge I have. Anyway, I wait for your next version with more options. I guess this will be great for some people who do not have any particular profile or does not want to have one.. Release your new version soon buddy. Thank you very much.. You indeed got a great blog. Bookmarked & subscribed using your plugin :P

        Reply
  9. Tushar says:
    February 4, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    I need to ask one more that How can i re-size the “circle us on Google” field? It oversize than my sidebar size.

    Please help me.

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 4, 2012 at 11:22 pm

      Dude I am very sorry about that, but the only solution that I can think of right now is to edit the plugin file. I’ll tell you how.
      1. Open the “wp-content/plugins/easy-mashable-social-bar/Easy-Mashable-Social-Bar.php” through Filezilla.
      2. Find the line 

      <div class="g-plus" data-href="http://plus.google.com/&lt;?php echo $googleplus_id; ?>" data-size="smallbadge"></div>

      .
      3. Edit it to 

      <div class="g-plus" data-href="https://plus.google.com/&lt;?php echo $googleplus_id; ?>" data-width="280" data-height="69" data-theme="light"></div>

      .

      This should work for you now. I’ll have to find a way to add an option to edit the width from the widget configuration itself.

      Let me know if it works.

      Reply
  10. Adam James says:
    February 6, 2012 at 3:38 am

    Prasenjit, thanks so much for this – I hadn’t really checked out the source code of this one.

    I was actually just writing a post about the plugin for my blog so really nice save here, I’ll be including a link to this post now so my readers can benefit from this.

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 6, 2012 at 8:59 am

      You’re most welcome Adam. It’ll be really very good if you point out this fact of hidden links in your posts and should link to the clean version. Great initiative we’ve taken to help the blogosphere.

      Reply
      • Adam James says:
        February 6, 2012 at 4:39 pm

        I’ve written the post and explained all about hidden links and linked back, but I’m just waiting to migrate hosts so I will have to hold off posting it till that’s finished.

        I wonder if you could help with something though, if you visit the link on my site you’ll see your re-coded version already on my site, however I’m having problems with the displaying of the google plus badge, it’s just appearing as empty space, any idea’s?

        Thanks!

        Reply
        • Prasenjit says:
          February 6, 2012 at 9:46 pm

          Ok Adam. Found the problem. You have linked to your Google Plus profile which is not something that the plugin supports. You have to create a G+ page and add the page id in the widget. You can refer this article and to find out more.

          Once you link to your page, it should work fine I suppose. Just let me know if that solves your problem.

          Thanks.

          Reply
  11. Suraj says:
    February 7, 2012 at 10:46 am

    The new plugin doesnt provide so many options….is there any site that provides a download link for this?

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 7, 2012 at 10:35 pm

      Which one are you referring Suraj? Do you want to say that my version of the plugin does not offer much options? If yes, then I would like to say that this is just a re-write of the original plugin released by InspiredMagz. I’ve only removed the hidden links and added the “Add to Google+ Circle”. Thats it.

      Reply
  12. Peter Lee says:
    February 9, 2012 at 11:30 pm

    Hi Prasenjit,

    Thanks for making the revised version of this plugin. Could you please tell me how to remove the Google+ badge at the top because I would prefer to use this badge separately which I could include users profile pictures in it. As such I do not need the badge on this plugin and would like to remove it. Is this possible?

    Appreciate the help and thanks.

    Peter

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 10, 2012 at 2:08 am

      Hi Peter,

      I’ll soon come up with a revised version of the plugin which will have more options to let the user control what he wants. Till then please open the plugin file under “~home/wp-content/plugins/easy-mashable-social-bar/Easy-Mashable-Social-Bar.php” and delete the below line. That will fix your problem.

      <div class="g-plus" data-href="http://plus.google.com/&lt;?php echo $googleplus_id; ?>" data-size="smallbadge"></div>

      Thanks for using the plugin.

      Reply
  13. Sav says:
    February 10, 2012 at 4:05 am

    Hey there,

    Love the plugin. But I have question regarding removing the link at the bottom of the widget. In the widget option, iv left everything blank regarding the footer text and link.

    But a little square appears linking back to same page the widget is on, regardless if im viewing from my homepage or a post.

    Here is screen shot pic: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/804/linkzd.png/

    I’d like to remove it, since its giving a link back to my own site. It would helpful if I could remove it.

    Thanks,

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 10, 2012 at 8:16 am

      Hi Sav,

      Simply remove the below code from the plugin php file.

      <div id="get-inspiredmagz" style="background: #EBEBEB;border: 1px solid #CCC;border-top: 1px solid white;padding: 1px 8px 1px 3px;text-align: right;border-image: initial;font-size:10px;font-family: "Arial","Helvetica",sans-serif;">
      <span class="author-credit" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="<?php echo $footerurl_id; ? rel="nofollow">" target="_blank" title="< ?php echo $footertext_id; ?>">< ?php echo $footertext_id; ?> »</a></span></div>
      Reply
  14. Caleb says:
    February 11, 2012 at 3:44 pm

    What happened to the faces of Facebook fans showing and is this plugin more effective at getting the likes and plus ones we are looking for being that there are so many promising to do the same thing :?:

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 11, 2012 at 7:03 pm

      Why what happened to the faces? Since this social box is used by Mashable, we can presume that it will be more effective than the others.

      Reply
      • Caleb says:
        February 12, 2012 at 3:26 am

        I only asked because i didn’t see any faces on yours but now I at least see mines after I plus oned it :)

        I would suggest you make the following in your next release:
        1- Allow the option and editing features of the top Add to Circles part
        2- Allow the option of showing plugin credits or not or at least charge a couple of dollars to have it removed
        3- Since there’s already two spots for GPlus remove the small bottom GPlus and replace it with a small LinkedIn

        btw,
        Do you know how to add a background color to the Add to Circles spot :?:

        Reply
        • Prasenjit says:
          February 12, 2012 at 8:54 am

          The FB faces only appear when you’re logged into FB, i.e. when there is an active Facebook session.
          1. This is planned feature.
          2. Good idea, but right now I do not have any plans to charge my users. I add that option for free.
          3. Your point is correct. I’ll do it. But many of us do not have LinedIn accounts. Hence I doubt how much it will be useful.

          What do you mean by background color to Add to Circles? Add to Circles is being loaded in an iframe from Google, and hence it cannot be manipulated. Do you mean something else?

          Reply
  15. Ahmad Awais says:
    February 17, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    I have re-coded the plugin from the nib !
    Well , i am upto add more features in it soon.

    Reply
  16. Khalid Irfan says:
    February 17, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    Im using the same plugin but its little out of range, can you help please?

    Reply
  17. Prasenjit says:
    February 18, 2012 at 12:55 am

    New version uploaded with some added features which we received as comments. Please download the new version and let me know if you come across any bugs.

    If you want any more features to be added into the plugin, then please leave a comment or drop an email.

    Thanks,
    Prasenjit.

    Reply
  18. Peter Lee says:
    February 18, 2012 at 8:07 am

    Prasenjit,

    Could you please add a screenshot of the v1.1.4 some where in this post so that we could have a glance before downloading it? Thanks.

    Peter

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 18, 2012 at 9:17 am

      Hi Peter, There is not much change in the frontend. Below is the changelog:
      1. Cleaned html and css to fix overflow of some div’s
      2. Added option to select whether to show Add to Circle or not.
      3. Now you can show faces in the Add to Circle badge. That means both the Small badge and the Standard badge are included.
      4. Change theme of the Add to Circle box – options include light and dark.
      5. Show or hide Facebook faces.

      Just download and install it. You’ll like it.

      Reply
      • Peter Lee says:
        February 19, 2012 at 2:37 pm

        Hi Prasenjit,

        I’ve used v1.1.4 on my blog now but somehow, the 3 icons at the very bottom (RSS Feed, Email Updates and Google Plus) are not totally/fully visible. Just take a look on the widget on my blog here : http://www.computerhowtoguide.com/. Please advice on how can I fix this. Thanks.

        Peter

        Reply
        • Prasenjit says:
          February 19, 2012 at 3:09 pm

          Hi Peter,

          Just FTP through your plugins directory and then to the easy-mashable-social-bar directory (wp-content/plugins/easy-mashable-social-bar) and open style.css file. Find #other-social-bar .other-follow css selector and remove height: 20px; padding-top: 2px;.

          That should fix your problem.

          Reply
  19. steve warshaw says:
    February 23, 2012 at 4:40 am

    Prasenjit,

    This is an awesome plugin, but I’m having an issue. The add to circles part of the widget is completely blank on my blog (yes my browser is html 5 compatible.) Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Prasenjit says:
      February 23, 2012 at 7:48 am

      Do you have a business page created in Google Plus? If not then that might be the issue. Please create a business page and insert your page id in the widget setting and it should work fine. Let me know if that solves your problem.

      Reply
  20. CD says:
    February 25, 2012 at 4:07 am

    Hi Prasenjit

    I just installed the plugin on my website. I’ve changed both Twitter and Facebook to Spanish, but I don’t know how to do it for the Google+ Circles button. Can you please help me out?.

    Thanks

    Reply
  21. msrosyidi says:
    March 4, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    how about this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-mashsocial-wigdet/…??? I see the screenshoot is same Easy Mashable Social Bar Plugin…

    Reply
  22. Stephen says:
    March 5, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    Hi, is there a way to remove the subscribe feedburner part?

    Reply
  23. caenz says:
    March 10, 2012 at 9:49 pm

    why it’s look ugly on my site?

    Reply
  24. Karlos says:
    March 11, 2012 at 8:50 pm

    Great Job Prasenjit.

    I don´t know why some plugin developers insist in inserting hidden links to their plugins.

    I know they want backlinks but as you say, that way is unethical.

    Thanks for your advice.

    Regards

    Reply
  25. Rohan Gupta says:
    March 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Thank you for the improved plugin,we are going to remove the old plugin and install this one.

    Reply

Trackbacks

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