disable certain nodes from within the module

Visual problems with addthis blocks are quite easy to solve. You could just add a few lines of CSS to your theme or create a custom block-addthis.tpl.php in extreme cases. This would enable you to get rid off the massive blue line just for addthis blocks.

Managing how and when a addthis block is shown is another case. There are plenty of block display modules and code snippets already. I do not want to start adding another layer of block visibility control on top of what Drupal already offers. Please use some existing solution for limiting block visibility.

Controlling when addthis button is shown in node links is yet another thing. Option for using addthis button in links is there just for historical reasons and personally I would like to get rid of it at some point. Button with div on it's own is not really what Drupal links are designed for and this causes all kind of issues frequently. My current plan is to move addthis button to actual node content and add Views integration (perhaps also CCK field support) to enable even more control over how the button is displayed.

This way the module will follow normal Drupal ways of doing things instead of creating custom solutions. I am sorry to say that all this will take some time to implement. For now you should hopefully be ok with a little bit of block theming and visibility settings.

An AddThis CCK field would be awesome. Are there any particular roadblocks to implementing this? I'd be glad to help.

I haven't really even started working with AddThis CCK field yet. There are a lot of examples available on how to create CCK field types, so implementation would hopefully be easy. CCK for D6 getting ready for release this could be a good time to start working on this.

So is there any way to choose which node types the AddThis button is displayed on? Using AddThis 1.x we were able to do this in the Access Control settings, but I can't see a way to do this with this latest version. Or am I overlooking something obvious?

Yes there is. You can use AddThis block and control the block visibility.

Thanks, but I'd prefer to keep it in the node links. Look forward to the CCK version, though. That sounds ideal.

There is a patch for #4 idea.

This patch adds a checkbox in the Node Type Workflow area. Unselect (selected by default) to remove the AddThis button from that specific node type. It is really easy. One function + one more variable_get() call in the handling of the node links.

And this is not the CCK solution. I like the Node Type idea because then I can remove the AddThis button from all my Pages & Forum, but keep it on my Blog & Stories. Really cool!

And wesku, all you need to do is apply my patch 9-) (well... you may want to test a bit too!)

Thanks for the patch. I'll have a look at it.

I am not a big fan of each module having a lot of settings on their own when you can use more common Drupal ways of doing things instead. I can see that just implementing the block is not enough for all sites and even CCK integration doesn't do much if you don't want to use CCK..

I don't disagree. Too many options makes modules complicated to use. The Übercart is a good example! "Über" is right.

This being said, in this case the default is as before so if you never notice that feature, it still works as expected. In other words, I like the concept of this one.

And I do not think we could do anything similar with the default Drupal settings. For me, I could make use of a flag in each node. That's easy enough. But for many people, that's "very complicated" to remember to change a flag. So helping them by turning it off completely for a set of nodes is a quite good solution.

Well... my personal point of view. 8-)
Alexis Wilke

I would like to see this in both 5.x and 6.x. Some node types--like nodeprofiles--just shouldn't have the AddThis button on them, and as long as having the button in the links is part of the module, there should be a way to get rid of it that doesn't involve switching to a block.

Maybe making the button themeable could be a solution to this and number of other issues. My primary concern is that every setting I add will be there permanently and I would like to avoid feature bloat in such a simple module.

There's a difference between feature bloat and sensible functionality. Poll.module is feature bloat; node titles are sensible functionality. In the same way, it doesn't make sense to apply an AddThis button to every content type when there's obviously no reason for it to be there.

Making the button themeable would work for people who know how to theme. It's one viable solution. But it's up to you to think about the scope of who you want to offer this module to, since there are plenty of people who don't know the first thing about theming.

I agree with IceCreamYou.

It is not that easy to use a theme to make things appear here and there. And on a node type basis?! Okay, with a Block. That too is complicated. 99% of my customers would not know how to do that by themselves!

You have to think of it in a stand point of an end user who expects things to be "finished."

Thank you.
Alexis Wilke

Ok guys, let's see what happens. Very slightly modified patch by AlexisWilke has now been commited to 6.x dev branch. Please test the module with this setting.

I am still thinking on the user interface side of things. Workflow settings for a node is sort of logical place for this, but now there are a lot of different ways to enable/disable the module. If we have setting per content type I think we could loose "Display on node pages" configuration option and just default to not showing the button instead.

I agree, I think getting rid of the "display on node pages" option would simplify things.

Will test when I can, if it's still needed by that time (two weeks or so). Any chance of a 5.x commit?

Cool, thank you wesku!

Great feature.

By this in #14: "just default to not showing the button instead" ...
do you mean that the "Show AddThis button on this type of node" would NOT be checked in Workflow Settings by default?
For the sites I'm working on, that would be more useful. More pages don't need it than do need it.

Views integration would be a huge help, too.

Zelavi: You are correct, button would NOT be shown by default. I think this makes more sense for most people and usually you don't want something just popping up everywhere only by installing the module.

Do you mean by views integration that addthis would be visible as field in views? Personally I would like to integrate addthis as CCK field type which would also give you views integration as a bonus.

There are now a number of unpublished changes in CVS. I'm sorry it has been a while since I've touched this project, I've been busy with some other modules and work lately. There is at least one more patch waiting to be integrated with CVS and then there will be a dev version for a while before publishing next version of addthis. I don't want to rush this too much since the module is now quite bug free and new features always mean new bugs.

If CCK integration means Views integration, then that's the answer. Basically, it would be ideal to show a Share button for a node that is displayed in a block built in Views.

Example:
http://www.star-journey.com/news
the "Star Beam" at the top is a block at the top of the News page.

The client would like to share just the Star Beam itself, but directly from the News page.

So after building the node in CCK, in the Views block I include the field containing the Share button, and the button picks up the node's URL (and not the composite page's URL)? That would be awesome.

Old, I know. Here's a back-ported patch for D5 for #7. Only minor change is defaulting to disabled for all types. Cheers.