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Social Sharing Toolkit Bug Makes Facebook Share Button Hide Parts of Post

ByMaAnna Stephenson

The Social Sharing Toolkit plugin has a bug that blanks out two-thirds of a post when you’re signed in as a Facebook page admin. The full post appears when you switch to your personal profile. See how this bug makes your posts appear and what you can do to temporarily fix it. 

Thanks to Donna Saliter of In Touch Promotions for calling this to my attention and letting me know it wasn’t just me experiencing this on my iPad. It’s being seen by everyone who is logged in to Facebook as a page admin.

What it Looks Like

When I’m signed into Facebook as my BlogAid page, and I visit a blog post on BlogAid, the Facebook social share buttons above the post blank out the right two-thirds of the post. It looks like this:

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The Culprit

The first three buttons are for Facebook. The third one in particular is the culprit. It’s the Facebook Share button. (The other two buttons are Facebook Like and Facebook Send.) And as you can see in the image below, all three of them are instructing me to switch to my personal profile. The one circled in red is the only full button showing, and is the Share button that is causing the issue.

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Blanks Out Comments Too

If you have the social share buttons below the post, it blanks out comments the same way. See below. There should be comments across all that white space.

blankClick It To See Post

When I click any of the Facebook buttons to switch to my personal profile, the full post view returns.

The Plugin

I’m using the Social Sharing Toolkit plugin for my share buttons. I temporarily switched to Sexy Bookmarks. It wanted me to switch to my personal profile too, but didn’t blank out the post, as shown below. 

blankYeah, I know I’ve got both kinds of buttons above the post. It’s just for demonstration. It didn’t blank out the comments below the post either. (FYI, SexyBookmarks has come off my recommended list due to some shading practices by the developers.)

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the bug seems to be with the Social Share Toolkit buttons. I’ll be reporting this to the developer via their page on the WordPress repository.

The Temp Fix

I’m sticking with the Social Sharing Toolkit plugin. I really like the way the buttons look. And, this issue will only happen to folks who view my posts when they are logged in as their Facebook biz page admin. In other words, the majority of visitors to my site will not see this issue, just a nice, clean row of buttons.

blankI found a temp fix by selecting medium icon instead of button for the Facebook Share item. (You’ll find that under the Content tab of the plugin’s settings.) It doesn’t look exactly like the rest of the buttons, but at least folks who are logged in as their Facebook page admins can see my posts! (See image above.) The other two Facebook buttons still want me to switch to my personal profile, but that’s okay, they’re not knocking out the post. 

I’ll keep you updated on what I hear back from the plugin devs.

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MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.

8 Comments

  2. Thanks for the head’s up, MaAnna. We use Digg Digg on The Future of Ink and I use it on DeniseWakeman.com as well, so it appears is a Facebook issue vs. a plugin issue (maybe) since the plugin has to get the info from Facebook. Not being very techie, I’m just guessing here.

    1. Thanks Denise. So, that’s two plugins suffering from it. I tried a couple of other plugins, and they have no issues, so maybe not a Facebook problem. But, can’t check all plugins. Thanks for letting us know Digg Digg is doing it too.

    1. Hi Randy, I see that you are still using the medium icon on that site for the Facebook share button. Assuming that’s because it still has the other bug. I just tried to switch back to the button and still getting the original bug. Noticed that the Digg Digg share buttons have the same issue still too.

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