heart_this Removed from Cook’d Pro

Why was it removed?

The heart_this plugin was developed as a styling element for Cook’d Pro, which was removed from version 4.0.0 released on December 21, 2018.

The issue was that nothing it conveys is important to the site visitors:

• The numbers are arbitrary without context – is 4 hearts good? 46 hearts? 211 hearts?
• Is this the same as Facebook likes? Or Instagram hearts? Why hearts instead of unicorn stickers?
• It can be artificially manipulated, which leads to a lack of trust

This can all lead to confusion to the visitor and generally isn’t a positive quality signal for a site.

Our current best practices move away from things that don’t directly improve the user experience on the site.

Most of all, it was developed for a different technology set (relying on certain Javascript) and began running into odd bugs that were too difficult to resolve.

Restoring heart_this

You can re-add heart_this by adding the following:

To styles.css:

/* Heart This	
--------------------------------------------- */	

 .cookd .heart-this,	
.cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this,	
.cookd .heart-this:hover,	
.cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this:hover {	
	background: none;	
	border: 0;	
	display: inline-block;	
	font-size: 13px;	
	font-style: normal;	
	font-weight: 400;	
	height: auto;	
}	

 .cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this:hover,	
.cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this:focus,	
.cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this.active {	
	color: #000;	
}	

 .cookd .heart-this:before,	
.cookd .heart-this-wrap .heart-this:before {	
	background: transparent;	
	content: "\f08a";	
	font-family: "FontAwesome";	
	-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;	
	-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;	
	font-style: normal;	
	font-variant: normal;	
	font-weight: normal;	
	height: auto;	
	line-height: 0.8;	
	margin-right: 10px;	
	text-transform: none;	
	width: auto;	
}	

To functions.php, inside cookd_post_info_filter():

if ( function_exists( 'heart_this' ) ) {	
		$info = " {$info}";	
	}

The heart_this function is located inside the heart_this plugin.

Future Support & Development

This plugin was dropped because it’s unsupported by the original developer. This is likely due to the fact that it is a free plugin, which leaves no incentive for further development and support.

We’re not aware of anyone currently familiar with it, or interested in developing it.

Alternative

Instead, we recommend focusing on things that drive a positive user experience. In 2019, this involves better engagement with visitors via blog comments, where on-topic discussions can be the focus.