Title: Flare
Author: telepathy
Published: <strong>July 26, 2012</strong>
Last modified: September 8, 2016

---

Search plugins

![](https://ps.w.org/flare/assets/banner-772x250.jpg?rev=589054)

This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/flare_090c16.svg)

# Flare

 By [telepathy](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dtelepathy/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/flare.zip)

 * [Details](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/flare/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/flare/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/flare/#installation)
 * [Development](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/flare/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/)

## Description

The Flare plugin isn’t in active development because we’ve created a hosted app 
version of Flare that works with virtually any website or CMS, including WordPress.

Flare Lite is here, and it’s awesome – go [sign up for a free Filament account](http://app.filament.io/users/register)
to use it.

For more info on the differences, check out [this Forum post](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/a-few-of-the-common-questions-about-the-plugin).

####  

#### About the Flare WordPress Plugin

Up your website’s social score with a little social Flare! Easily configure and 
share your blog posts across some of the most popular networks.

Flare allows you to:

 * Add a Follow Me widget – place widgets on your site with links to your social
   networks to get more followers.
 * Configure multiple share icons for some of the most popular sharing services 
   like Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Google+ and Pinterest! More coming
   soon!
 * Easily order your icons, customize their icons’ appearance
 * Control which post types your Flare appears on
 * Display your Flare at the top, bottom, left or right sides of your post content
 * Flare displayed on the left and right of your post follow your visitors down 
   the page as they scroll and conveniently hide when not needed

Flare buttons work in IE7+ as well as current versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari
and Opera; vertical following does not work in IE6. Admin interface requires a modern
browser (e.g. anything not IE 6-8 :). Utilizes jQuery for JavaScript processing,
although it is setup to work properly with other libraries, your experience may 
vary. Requires PHP 5.2+.

This plugin is free to use and is not actively supported by the author, but will
be monitored for serious bugs that may need correcting.

## Screenshots

 * [[
 * Choose where you want your Flare bar to appear
 * [[
 * You pick what social media you want to share
 * [[
 * Choose what style of button you want to display
 * [[
 * Customize the color of your buttons
 * [[
 * Drag and drop the order you want your buttons to appear in
 * [[
 * Multiple options available for certain social content
 * [[
 * You can also paste in your own custom code
 * [[
 * New Follow Me widget customization

## Installation

The plugin is simple to install:

 1. Download `flare.zip`
 2. Unzip
 3. Upload `flare` directory to your `/wp-content/plugins` directory
 4. Go to the plugin management page and enable the plugin

## FAQ

  Installation Instructions

The plugin is simple to install:

 1. Download `flare.zip`
 2. Unzip
 3. Upload `flare` directory to your `/wp-content/plugins` directory
 4. Go to the plugin management page and enable the plugin

  Can you make the share widgets of Flare deployable via a shortcode?

Not really unfortunately. The Flare JavaScript to make the floating bar appear requires
the presence of multiple elements on the page in different locations, so deploying
via a shortcode doesn’t really work.

  Can I place the Flare “Follow Me” widget non widget areas of my theme?

You sure can! Just use the [the_widget()](https://codex.wordpress.org/the_widget)
function to deploy the _FlareFollowWidget_ widget in your template files. For example:

    ```
    <?php the_widget( 'FlareFollowWidget', array( 'title' => "Follow Me", 'iconstyle' => "round", 'iconsize' => 64, 'iconspacing' => 5 ) ); ?>
    ```

The widget takes four “instance” parameters:

 * `title` – The title of the widget area
 * `iconstyle` – The style of the icon. This can be any of the keys found in the`
   Flare->iconstyles` array in the main `flare.php` file
 * `iconsize` – The size of the icon in pixels as an integer (ex. `64` for 64 pixels)
 * `iconspacing` – The spacing between the icons in pixels as an integer (ex. `10`
   for 10 pixels)

  My Reddit count is wrong

Reddit fuzzes their count, so every time a count total is requested or displayed
in the widget, its going to be a little different (usually +/- 20). This issue is
on Reddit, so unfortunately we can’t really do anything about it 🙁

  My Flare widgets are in a wierd position on my page

When it all boils down to it, Flare is just HTML and CSS. We try to place the Flare
widgets in a location that is as un-obtrusive as possible and works in as many layouts
as possible. As there are an infinite variety of themes out there though, your website’s
theme might not work well with where we attempt to place Flare. The good news is,
you can fix this by writing some CSS in your theme’s style.css file. Use a browser
inspector such as Firebug for Firefox or the developer tools for Chrome and Safari
to find out what styles need modifying for your Flare layout and write some overrides
in your theme’s style.css file.

  My content is not in English and the social widgets are flowing outside the bubble
Flare gives it

Unfortunately we cannot check the size of the content inside the social widgets 
themselves as they are in IFRAME tags. We set the IFRAME tag dimensions to work 
pretty well for most situations, but sometimes, they need to be wider. As mentioned
in the previous FAQ though, you can always write a line or two of CSS in your theme’s
style.css file to change the width of the bubbles.

## Reviews

![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/20eed4d0ae64e466d8d9597de8f63a2b8333d4ef9c5d3fc4b79b83d451235232?
s=60&d=retro&r=g)

### 󠀁[Shocked](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/shocked/)󠁿

 [fpats](https://profiles.wordpress.org/fpats/) February 7, 2017

Yet another plugin that doesn’t work. I bet the premium version does though.

 [ Read all 50 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/)

## Contributors & Developers

“Flare” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ telepathy ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dtelepathy/)
 *   [ ShareThis ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/sharethis/)

[Translate “Flare” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/flare)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/flare/), check out 
the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/flare/), or subscribe to 
the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/flare/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/flare/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.2.7

 * Update compatible-up-to version number

#### 1.2.6

 * Added a fix for Pinterest count

#### 1.2.5

 * Added option to disable Filament icon
 * Increased width of horizontal bubbles to account for a sizing bug with the LinkedIn
   share button
 * Added Github and Soundcloud follow icons

#### 1.2.4

 * Updated messaging to better describe the future of Flare (Pro)

#### 1.2.3

 * Load all social code via JavaScript instead of on-page code to improve load time
 * Updated some admin links
 * Added Powered by Filament badge
 * Updated total Flares to only show totals of current sharing button types
 * Added check in the_content() filter to restrict output if get_the_excerpt() is
   being called
 * Better handling of Pinterest count retrieval

#### 1.2.2

 * Fix for handling display issue with Pinterest iFrame causing spacing issues below
   footer

#### 1.2.1

 * Hotfix for placement of Pinterest share button in horizontal view
 * Removed the is_front_page() conditional from the valid Flare display check so
   Flare can still be displayed on static page front pages

#### 1.2.0

 * Added additional check for valid display to make sure Flare doesn’t appear on
   archive pages with only one post
 * Added Buffer to the button options
 * Fixed a layout issue with the large vertical Pinterest button position

#### 1.1.9b

 * Corrected Facebook Open Graph FQL query so that it is working correctly now

#### 1.1.9a

 * Updated Facebook Like count method to utilize new Open Graph FQL query since 
   previous Open Graph method was deprecated

#### 1.1.9

 * Fixed top horizonal totals visibility and space issue when the top horizontal
   bar is not supposed to be displayed.
 * Added the ability to toggle a visitor’s ability to hide the vertical floating
   Flare bar
 * Changed the floating Flare bar visitor visbility close cookie to be a session
   cookie instead of a long term cookie
 * Changed Oswald font load to use wp_enqueue_style() instead of @import in public
   Flare stylesheet
 * Made accommodation for selecting no post types for sharing (in case you just 
   want to use the follow widget)

#### 1.1.8a

 * Hotfix for WebFontLoader compatibility
 * Hotfix for total count

#### 1.1.8

 * Fixed Twitter caching
 * Added the ability to place the top and bottom Flare positions on the left or 
   right
 * Added additional CSS classes to horizontal flare output to make it easier to 
   style theme level overrides
 * Added the ability to display a total Flare Count
 * Added the ability to hide your Flare scores until an article has reached a specified
   aggregate amount of total social shares
 * Added the ability for the visitor to close the floating Flare bar (closed state
   remembered via a browser cookie)
 * Made positioning of floating Flare bar more intelligent so that on shorter screens,
   scrolling to the bottom of the page will push the Flare bar up for Flare bars
   that are taller than the viewscreen

#### 1.1.7

 * Fixed minor styling bug with flattened horizontal icon background positioning
 * Fixed positioning of flyouts and social widgets within flyouts
 * Fixed offset calculation for display of vertical social icons to accommodate 
   for slow loading assets
 * Change Pinterest image choice order to use the featured image before the first
   image in the content
 * Fixed LinkedIn total number query to accommodate for new API response
 * Fixed Reddit total number query to accommodate for variations in API response.
   Please note that Reddit Fuzzes the score, so the number displayed on the Flare
   element may be different than what is displayed in the widget – alas, we can’t
   fix this.

#### 1.1.6

 * Updated Stumbleupon code snippet to use the new format required for their API
   processing

#### 1.1.5

 * Added email as a sharing method
 * Added LinkedIn as a sharing method
 * Added the ability to turn off counters
 * Improved counter visibility
 * Fixed bug with Pinterest counter that was preventing the actual count from being
   returned
 * Restructured basic interaction with flyouts to prevent sharing service flyouts
   and “pop-ups” (such as Google+ +1 message customization) from disappearing when
   the visitor hovers away from the sharing icon.

#### 1.1.0

 * Updated branding iconography
 * Updated design of admin
 * Added background color option – light, dark, none
 * Fixed bug with inverted drop-down that was causing the drop-down to render in
   the wrong place
 * Made numbering for counts intelligently group by thousands/millions
 * Fixed bug that was preventing Flare from showing up on pages
 * Implemented lazy PHP Class loading to optimize memory usage of the plugin
 * Fixed a bug that was preventing the left/right bars from being properly hidden
 * Added a new Follow Me widget!

#### 1.0.2

 * Adjusted image URL retrieval method to return the full size image URL instead
   of the thumbnail for Pinterest

#### 1.0.1

 * Fixed bug with cache namespacing for total count API lookups

#### 1.0.0

 * Initial commit

## Meta

 *  Version **1.2.7**
 *  Last updated **8 years ago**
 *  Active installations **700+**
 *  WordPress version ** 3.0 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **3.7.41**
 *  Language
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/flare/)
 * Tags
 * [dtelepathy](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/dtelepathy/)[sharebar](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/sharebar/)
   [sidebar](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/sidebar/)[social widget](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/social-widget/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/flare/advanced/)

## Ratings

 3.1 out of 5 stars.

 *  [  18 5-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/?filter=5)
 *  [  6 4-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/?filter=4)
 *  [  3 3-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/?filter=3)
 *  [  2 2-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/?filter=2)
 *  [  17 1-star reviews     ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/?filter=1)

[Add my review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ telepathy ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/dtelepathy/)
 *   [ ShareThis ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/sharethis/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/flare/)