Based on an item on the TODO Before Stable list, it must be decided whether Addthis is beneficial to this project or not.
The use of almost all available social options has certainly bolstered our presence, but at the cost of speed.
Trending
With the introduction of view-counts in the upcoming Simplet 4, trending content could be replaced with a JavaScript accessed API, as could view tracking. This could also be internal to each page to get around JavaScript, but people disabling JavaScript probably don't want to be tracked, even server side. It would also reduce page load times to be external and asynchronous.
Sharing
Sharing is the core here, but could just as easily be done by hand, perhaps even more so. Most of the share we have haven't gained any notable traction, and almost 90% happen from the address bar. This wouldn't be affected, and while we'd lose the pretty graphs, they weren't admired enough anyway. Instead, we'll rely on Google Analytics once more.
Following
Following could be implemented inside HTML with great ease, and mush more elegantly too. Remind me about my project "Migration" when the time comes.
Welcomes and Suggestions
Personally, I don't think anyone will miss the welcome bar or suggestions which pushed our footer 1px up.
Conclusion
My vote is ditch.
It will be a little extra work, but the site should be much faster and cleaner. This is a thing where the more done in-house, the better.
Based on an item on the TODO Before Stable list, it must be decided whether Addthis is beneficial to this project or not.
The use of almost all available social options has certainly bolstered our presence, but at the cost of speed.
Trending
With the introduction of view-counts in the upcoming Simplet 4, trending content could be replaced with a JavaScript accessed API, as could view tracking. This could also be internal to each page to get around JavaScript, but people disabling JavaScript probably don't want to be tracked, even server side. It would also reduce page load times to be external and asynchronous.
Sharing
Sharing is the core here, but could just as easily be done by hand, perhaps even more so. Most of the share we have haven't gained any notable traction, and almost 90% happen from the address bar. This wouldn't be affected, and while we'd lose the pretty graphs, they weren't admired enough anyway. Instead, we'll rely on Google Analytics once more.
Following
Following could be implemented inside HTML with great ease, and mush more elegantly too. Remind me about my project "Migration" when the time comes.
Welcomes and Suggestions
Personally, I don't think anyone will miss the welcome bar or suggestions which pushed our footer 1px up.
Conclusion
My vote is ditch.
It will be a little extra work, but the site should be much faster and cleaner. This is a thing where the more done in-house, the better.