Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need help configuring ShareThis tools on your website? Here are some common issues you may encounter while installing our tools and how to resolve them.
When entering your website URL, do not include https:// at the beginning nor a slash (e.g., example.com/) at the end of your domain. You can simply enter your URL as follows: example.com
Sometimes, it may take 5 to 10 minutes to verify the domain. However, it should not impact the functionality of your ShareThis tools.
Alternatively, you can also manually activate the installation code and verify your website by following these steps:
| 1. Click on the Activate Code button within your verification banner in the top right-hand corner of your ShareThis dashboard. 2. Select Activate! button |
- Please be aware that some website builders may use iframes to embed the ShareThis script into your website. Due to the way iframes are designed, the code snippet could be unreachable which means we may not be able to verify your domain in the ShareThis Platform but the tools should still work on your website.
- If the script code is inserted in the <body>, instead of the <head> of your website (by a website builder or by mistake), the ShareThis Platform also won’t be able to verify your domain.
- Also, please make sure you have any Ad blockers disabled, as they can block web requests from loading in a web browser and could make the ShareThis Platform malfunction.
- If you only want to use Sticky Share Buttons on a specific page, add the general domain of your website in the ShareThis Platform (e.g. example.com), copy the script code from the platform, and paste it ONLY on the page you want the ShareThis tool to appear.
- If you have multiple tools on your website and would like to display some tools only on specific sub-directories or paths, you can create a specific property for a specific path (e.g. example.com/path) in the platform. This way, each directory will have different configurations which you can manage from the same dashboard. To add a new domain, go to your Platform Settings, scroll down to Domains, and click Add new domain.
- If on the other hand, you want to hide the Sticky Share Buttons on a few URLs only, please add this HTML code to those pages only:
<div class=’sharethis-sticky-share-buttons’ style=”display:none”>
<div class=’st-sticky-share-buttons’ style=”display:none”> - If you are using our Video or Image Share Buttons, you can use our Omit Class feature to stop them from showing on specific images or videos. For more information, we encourage you to check our support article How to Use the “Omit Class” Feature.
After you’ve completed installing, we recommend waiting for 3 to 5 minutes so the buttons can be properly loaded onto your website. Please keep in mind that your button configurations are sent from our servers, which is why the buttons may take a few minutes to work. Once a connection has been made, you shouldn’t have this issue moving forward.
That said, there could be a few reasons why the buttons are not appearing, including:
- If your <div> tag is nested within many HTML elements, the parent element properties may prevent the inline tools from showing up. We do not recommend placing the <div> tag within multiple HTML elements.
- There is limited space in the container where the buttons are being displayed. To fix this, you may need to check the CSS properties of the share buttons and modify the container’s size (width) accordingly. Also, if the container has a Flex property, the number of buttons shown may be limited if there isn’t enough space, so you will also need to modify the container’s size (width).
- If the container where the buttons are placed doesn’t load or exists when the page finishes loading, you will need to reinitialize the buttons. For more information, check out our support guide here.
- The previous version of your site is being cached. To show the latest changes, including the newly added buttons, please do a Hard Refresh (Reload) on the page where the buttons are located. For this, press Ctrl + Shift + R on your keyboard on Windows or Cmd + Shift + R on macOS.
In case you have made a modification to your buttons (or any ShareThis tools) and the changes are not being applied, even after waiting for more than 5 minutes, we recommend you to do a Hard Refresh (Reload) on your website, this will clear the cache stored for that particular page and the browser will retrieve the latest data, instead of loading cached data. Browsers store data (i.e. caching configuration or CSS files, images, etc.) about a site that helps a website load faster and this may be the reason why you are not seeing the changes you’ve made.
For this, simply press Ctrl + Shift + R on your keyboard on Windows or Cmd + Shift + R on macOS.
In case this doesn’t help, you could try refreshing the ShareThis Platform too, some browsers may put tabs to sleep if they are idle for too long.
The sharing count for ShareThis buttons is tied to the URL of the page. This means that if the URL is changed, then the counts will reset. Changes to the URL can include:
- Changing the URL to something new
- Switching from one sub-domain to another
- Changing SSL (e.g., updating from HTTP to HTTPS)
- Including a re-direct on the URL
- Implementing the data-URL parameter on the button code with a different URL than the page URL
At this time, unfortunately, there is no way to transfer/export the stats between different URLs.
There are many customization options for ShareThis tools. However, some users may prefer to use custom CSS styles. You can apply CSS styles on ShareThis tools by referencing them by their HTML class or ID. See the chart below to reference the tool with its respective CSS Class.
| Tool | CSS Class |
| Sticky Share Buttons | .sharethis-sticky-share-button |
| Inline Share Buttons | .sharethis-inline-share-buttons |
| Follow Buttons | .sharethis-inline-follow-buttons |
| Reaction Buttons | .sharethis-inline-reaction-buttons |
| Video Share Buttons | .st-video-share-buttons |
| Image Share Buttons | .st-image-share-buttons |
For more information on our platform, check out our support guide: https://www.sharethis.com/support/faq/registering-platform-account/