We have released version 1.3 of Shared Counts. This update brings several useful features, performance improvements, and fixes designed to make social share tracking more reliable and easier to use. Below is a clear summary of what’s new, what changed, and what was fixed in this release.
Twitter counts using TwitCount
Our previous Twitter count provider shut down, so we’ve added support for TwitCount as the new source for Twitter share counts. To enable Twitter counts, create a free account on TwitCount, then in your WordPress dashboard go to Settings > Shared Counts and check “Include Twitter Counts”. This restores the ability to display and aggregate Twitter share totals for your posts.
Social interaction tracking with Google Analytics
Shared Counts now triggers a Google Analytics event when a visitor clicks any of your share buttons. This makes it simple to track social interactions in Google Analytics under Acquisition > Social > Plugins, so you can see which share actions are driving engagement and how visitors interact with sharing options across your site.
Stats in the admin bar
When viewing a post on the front end while logged in, the WordPress admin bar now includes a convenient Shared Counts button that displays the total number of shares and the last cache update time. Hovering over the button reveals a breakdown of shares by service. Clicking the button forces an immediate refresh of share counts for that page, which is useful when testing changes or confirming that counts have updated.
Pinterest addon updates
The Shared Counts – Pinterest Image addon has been improved. Previously, the separate Pinterest image was only used when a user clicked a Shared Counts Pinterest button. With this update, the dedicated Pinterest image is also exposed to other tools and extensions, improving how your content is shared via the Pinterest browser button and services like Tailwind.
Full changelog
Added
- A filter to change which services are used based on location via the shared_counts_display_services filter. This lets themes and plugins programmatically customize which share buttons appear for different parts of your site.
- Admin bar stats, so authors and admins can quickly view and refresh share counts while browsing posts.
- Support for Twitter counts using TwitCount as the count source, restoring Twitter totals after the prior provider shut down.
- Automatic social share tracking integration with Google Analytics, enabling event-based reporting of share clicks in GA.
- Support for using fastcgi_finish_request when updating counts, which can help reduce perceived page load time by finishing the response before longer background tasks complete.
- Ability to specify services directly in shortcode via a services attribute (comma separated), allowing for granular control of which buttons appear per instance.
Changed
- The needs_updating method now receives post_id, improving update logic and compatibility with custom setups.
- Removed support for Google+ and StumbleUpon, which are no longer active services.
- Default letter-spacing on button labels is set to normal for more consistent typography across themes.
- The Total Counts button will be hidden when empty if the “Hide Empty Counts” setting is enabled, avoiding visual clutter when there are no shares to display.
Fixed
- Resolved a conflict with the Pinterest JavaScript API to prevent interference with other scripts.
- Eliminated extra spaces between CSS classes inside generated markup to keep class attributes clean and predictable.
- Fixed Twitter URL encoding issues that caused problems with special characters in share text, ensuring URLs and text are encoded correctly when sharing.
- Corrected an issue where email share counts were not being tracked properly.
- Fixed visibility logic that showed the “Preserve HTTP Counts” setting even when the Count Source was set to None.
- Adjusted initial saving behavior to enable sensible defaults for various settings on first save.
- When sorting posts by share count in the admin, posts with zero shares are now included in the results to provide a complete sorting experience.
- Made data attributes filterable so developers can modify or extend output attributes through filters.
If you manage a site that relies on social sharing metrics, version 1.3 improves accuracy, tracking, and the developer tools available to customize share behavior. The changes focus on restoring key count sources, improving analytics integration, and polishing the admin experience for content teams.