Another new feature of 2.3 is the “Share Product” buttons which appear on each products information page;
Each of these buttons links to their respective sites to allow anyone browsing your shop let their friends and followers know about your product. As an example, here is what happens if the “twitter” button is clicked;
As you can see, the status is automatically showing the product URL, ready for tweeting. Same for facebook, buzz etc.
The only one that is slightly different is the first one, which is basically the same as the old “tell a friend” functionality that was in earlier versions of osCommerce.
It’s always good to allow people to promote your products, so these buttons are a welcome addition to 2.3 in my opinion.
What if you want to remove a button?
That’s easy enough, it’s an admin setting. So enter the admin area and go modules > social bookmarks;
Here you can remove modules, change the sort order of display etc. I’d like to remove all the modules except for Digg. So I highlight each in turn and press [- Remove Module] button. Now my Share Products box looks like this;
What if I want to add in Social Bookmark Icons?
Again, that’s easy. Simply hit the [+ Install Module] button…and you will be presented with a list of installable modules to select from. An interesting one is “Facebook Like”, so I’ll select that and press again press [+ Install Module]. I can now edit this module to suit my needs.
I now have a facebook like button on my product page;
This is something that people have been wanting for a while. Note that this module uses the iframe method from facebook rather than the much better API version that I previously blogged about.
You want to change the text “Share Product” ?
Open up /includes/languages/english.php and find the text to change;
I changed it to “Social Bookmarks”;
So my box now looks like this;
Conclusion
Nice addition to osCommerce, that will allow the site owner to have his/her products promoted by both customers and potential customers easily. I think we all know that word of mouth is the most powerful way of getting new customers, so this has to be a great addition…