Simple Post Like — Add Reactions to Your Posts

Simple Post Like is a free, open-source WordPress plugin that adds a like button to your posts — built for developers and site owners who want a focused, well-crafted feature without pulling in a heavyweight plugin to do one simple thing.

It works with any theme. It has no jQuery dependency. It stores no raw IP addresses. And it takes two minutes to configure from the admin page under Settings → Simple Post Like.

Three Display Styles, One Setting

Simple Post Like ships with three display styles to suit any design context. Button shows a full button with icon, label, and like count — good for editorial sites and blogs. Icon + Counter shows a compact icon with the count floating beside it — good for tight layouts and card grids. Icon Only shows a minimal circle icon button — good for design-forward themes where every pixel matters.

Switch between them in Settings with a single click. Or override per-instance using the shortcode’s style attribute — useful when you want a full button on single posts but an icon-only version on archive cards.

Auto-Injection — No Template Edits Required

Simple Post Like hooks into WordPress’s the_content filter and injects the like button automatically, based entirely on your settings. Choose to inject after content, before content, before and after, or not at all on individual post pages. Toggle archive injection separately to show the button after each post on blog index, category, tag, and search pages.

Disable the master Auto Injection toggle to switch to shortcode-only mode — the right choice when your theme’s templates already have dedicated spots for actions, or when you want precise control over placement in block editor layouts.

Shortcode for Manual Placement

Place the like button anywhere with the [simple_post_like] shortcode — inside post content, page builders, widget areas, or directly in template files via do_shortcode().

[simple_post_like]
[simple_post_like post_id="123"]
[simple_post_like style="icon_only"]
[simple_post_like style="icon_counter"]

The post_id attribute defaults to the current post. The style attribute overrides the global display setting for that instance only.

Guest Likes with Hashed IP Tracking

Enable guest likes in Settings and non-logged-in visitors can like posts too. Guest likes are tracked by a SHA-256 hash of the visitor’s IP address combined with WordPress’s NONCE_SALT — so no raw IP addresses are ever written to the database, and the hash is site-specific and non-reversible. Disable guest likes entirely to restrict the feature to logged-in users only.

When a guest later creates an account and logs in, their previous guest like is cleaned up automatically on their next interaction.

Statistics Dashboard

The Statistics tab in Settings gives you a clear view of engagement across your content — without leaving WordPress admin.

Three summary cards show total likes across all posts, the number of posts that have at least one like, and the like count of your most popular post. Below that, a sortable leaderboard lists your top 10 most liked posts with rank badges, post type labels, and direct view and edit links.

The Posts list table at wp-admin/edit.php gets a Likes column too — visible for all enabled post types, sortable by clicking the column header, so you can rank your entire content library by engagement in one click.

Themeable with CSS Custom Properties

Simple Post Like exposes its full visual language as CSS custom properties on :root. Override them from your theme’s stylesheet to restyle the button entirely — color, radius, font size, transition speed — without touching plugin files, writing !important, or worrying about update safety.

:root {
  --spl-color:        #your-brand-color;
  --spl-btn-radius:   4px;
  --spl-font-size:    14px;
}

The full list of available properties is documented in the CSS Customization reference.

GPL Licensed — Free Forever

Simple Post Like is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license — the same license as WordPress itself. Use it in personal projects, client work, and commercial themes without restriction. No license keys, no feature tiers, no upsells. Just a well-built plugin, free and open source.

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