Technology Advice

Ironically, it took a spammer to notify me that this website you are on now had a big gap in its design. It is the same error that inflicts all websites until something creative is done about it.

The error is the infamous “404 Page Not Found” message that we’ve all run into on the web visiting other sites.

Technically speaking, according to Wikipedia, here is the definition of the 404 error:

The 404 or Not Found error message is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) standard response code, in computer network communications, to indicate that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.

Translation for you and me:

A visitor to your website clicks on or types into their browser a broken page link.

For example, an Error 404 Page Not Found message will be displayed on a screen by default if someone types in your domain name correctly (e.g. https://GracefulResources.com) into her browser but not the page address (e.g. https://GracefulResources.com/testmonials instead of https://GracefulResources.com/testimonials).

The Dangers of Error 404 Page Not Found

In my case, the helpful spammer ironically revealed to me that my Error 404 Page Not Found was also displaying my entire sitemap including a resource I have for sale to help job interviewers.

In other words, if people have access to the full sitemap, they could access any resource without actually paying for it.

The more common danger of Error 404 Page Not Found is simply that your site visitors will abandon their visit to your website if they run into this roadblock, and they most likely will never return.

How to Fix and Benefit from Error 404 Page Not Found

The platform I use to run my WordPress site is Rainmaker and I discovered there is a built-in feature to automatically re-direct any site visitor from an invalid page address to a landing page of my design .

(Rainmaker Platform has a built-in landing page creator too – here’s a summary of my favorite features of this all-in-one solution for entrepreneurs.)

To truly benefit from an Error 404 Page Not Found message, I recommend creating a “Page Not Found” landing page that becomes an opt in page for your mailing list. Here is my example and a screen shot:

Once you’ve created your landing page, simply go to Settings / Content from your Rainmaker Dashboard and then scroll down to the 404 Page section and select the page name you gave your landing page.

In my case, I literally gave the page name “Page Not Found” so that when anyone uses an invalid page address, they will be redirected to https://gracefulresources.com/page-not-found/.

You can again check out the landing page directly from this actual web address (https://gracefulresources.com/page-not-found/) or you can try out any invalid address for my website (e.g. https://gracefulresources.com/not-a-real-page/) and see how the infamous 404 error message is now fixed with an extra benefit!

The Ironic Benefit of Error 404 Page Not Found

Thanks to technology, a broken page link on your website is no longer a bad thing if you set up a solution that instantly turns the error into an opportunity to promote your business and grow your mailing list.

Hope this helps,
Brent

FREE QUICK REFERENCE TECH GUIDE (click here): Discover the Graceful Resources I use and recommend for websites, including the reasons why, plus the mistakes to avoid when starting out in digital commerce.

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I’m here to take away the pain of figuring out how to use new web technologies so you can gracefully profit online from your passion in life.

You may also have a love/hate relationship with the counts on social media share buttons. Thanks to the Rainmaker Digital Support Team – the true techies behind this site running on the Rainmaker Platform (here’s why Rainmaker is recommended), there’s an easy way to remove social share counts.

So what exactly are the counts on social media share buttons?

The counts on social media share buttons are the public scorecards on blogs that display how many times your post is shared across different social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The buttons also serve to help site visitors share your content across the social media channel of their choice (and that is a very good thing).

Here’s a social media button count example from the popular Copyblogger blog (the same team behind the Rainmaker Platform):

As you can see in this example, this post has already been shared a total of 1390 times. Wow!

The Bright Side of Counts on Social Media Share Buttons

Social share counts demonstrate “social proof” that your content is worthy of sharing. More importantly, it also gives a usually-reliable perception that the author is an authority on the subject matter.

The logic is that if the author’s blog posts are well written, the author’s current and future products for sale (e.g. books, courses, membership programs) are also worthy of consideration.

It’s good logic and one that I subscribe too as a blogger and entrepreneur myself.

The Dark Side of Counts on Social Media Share Buttons

Social share counts indirectly punish the people just starting out (or starting over). A compelling blog post with just three shares is still a blog post with just three shares (and one of the shares may be your own and another is from your best friend).

As a result, it can create an often false perception the person behind the content is not noteworthy.

The counts on social media share buttons can also be inflated by bots and hired hands. In fact, less than a year ago Twitter announced on its blog that it will be shutting down the tweet count feature. That’s why you may now see count totals on social media share buttons on a post for Facebook but not Twitter.

You can still tweet the post like this one, but you can’t see the number of tweets.

How to Remove Counts on Social Media Share Buttons

The code to remove social share counts is quite simple and the social share buttons still appear and work as designed (which is very important).
To remove social share counts on blog posts, you will need to enter a simple code into your website theme CSS file. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is used to describe how web elements are displayed on the screen.

Here is the code to remove the counts on social media share buttons:

.content .share-filled .count {

display: none;

}

If you are using the Rainmaker Platform, here are your steps:

1. Select Design and then Custom CSS:

2. Paste the code at the end of your Custom CSS and then click Save Stylesheet:

3. Refresh one of your blog posts to see if the share counts are now hidden but the share buttons are still working:

If you are familiar with WordPress (but not using the Rainmaker Platform at this time), you probably noticed some similarities to native WordPress. That is because Rainmaker is based on a WordPress foundation (but designed to be more user-friendly on the inside).

How to Remove Social Media Button Counts on Other WordPress Sites

To remove social media share counts using native WordPress, you also want to update your theme Stylesheet (style.css).

To access this file, select Appearance and then Edit CSS (you can also select Editor and then your style.css file):

Important Note: Test your changes in a staging environment or create a production backup before you make any changes.

(For non-Rainmaker sites for my family and clients, I use and recommend WP Engine for hosting WordPress sites that are built on the Genesis Framework. WP Engine provides customers with both a staging environment and real-time backups for their WordPress sites. Here’s a complete summary of why I use and recommend WP Engine.)

When to Remove Counts on Social Media Share Buttons

In summary, removing counts on social media share buttons is a strategic choice based on where you are on your online platform journey.

If you already have a sizable mailing list audience, it probably doesn’t make sense.

But if you are just starting out (or starting over like me), removing social share counts may be a smart strategic move.

You don’t need to compare your social media button counts to those on blogs that have been growing for years. And you don’t need other people to make the same comparison.

You just need to focus on delivering great content on your website every week. That is what should be judged by others (not the number of shares on your brand new website).