Share .. Share .. SHARE!

Ok, I'm going to take the plunge. Time to take TowTalk.net into the new millennia. I like some of the changes that have happened around here, especially in the communication department between the developers and the end users. All I can say is FINALLY! Thanks Boonex.

One thing that I still think needs a massive amount of work is the scripts ability to share across all the major social engines. It still does not work for sh_t as far as I am concerned. Yes, I'm just  a nasty old tow truck driver that steals cars for a living so your going to have to deal with the vernacular that comes with that lifestyle. Get over it. It's how I make my point.

How come we spend so little time trying to do this? How come I can't click on a share button in a specific block of content on my site and post that specific content and/or images into a post on Facebook or Twitter or Google+?

I want to be able to do it everywhere. If I have ten blocks of content on my index page, I want ten share buttons. If I have a forum thread that's 60 posts long, I want to be able to share a specific post within that thread WITH THE SINGLE CLICK OF AN ICON.

I mean, lets get real here. Want to make Dolphin 7.2 the go to script for any type of site? Make it the go to script with the BEST built in architecture for sharing the content within. That's all you really need. Personally speaking, I run across crap all day long I'd like to share with my more than 3000 friends on Facebook but don't because I either can't from where I'm at or the share button doesn't work properly and I have to figure out how to manually add an image THAT'S FRIKKIN RELEVANT to the content? Bullshit, I just move on. Lost opportunity for the site developer.

I have been dicking around with Towtalk.net (and previously townation.com) for more than 10 years now. I know what I need it to do, I just need a script that can do it. 

Can we start focusing on the share aspect? If we don't, the rest won't matter.....

Sharing individual blocks doesn't sound like anything that should present any big technical challenges.  I don't think you'd want to wait around for Boonex to do it.  It may be a worthwhile third party mod for a market vendor to work on.

The first capability the mod would need, would be the ability to retrieve the shared block and content from the DB and display it on it's own page... or something along that line.  If you're going to share content that specific, you need the ability to display specific content.  Every content box has it's own unique ID, so everything you need to share specific blocks is readily available. 

What you really need, is a Dolphin Share API, that presents the content on a page based on url parameters that include the module, block ID, etc.

Sounds like a good project for Deano.

That's kind of what I thought. I've made posts in the past about this topic, always trying to find a good way to share posts, etc but it always seemed to be this insurmountable task. Deano tried to create something once but eventually gave up because they kept changing things, then 7.2 was supposed to be doing something that would make his work kind of pointless. 

Now I'm installing 7.2 on an existing site and my first point of attack is to get the site to a point that makes sharing it's content easy and useful, not generalized and basically pointless.

I plan on coming back to this thread and posting my thoughts as to what I found and what does and does not work for me.