Maintain social button counts for WordPress posts

gistfile1.phtml

<!--  If you switch to https, you lose the count that appears next to Twitter and Facebook buttons.
      Here's a snippet to maintain previous counts for WordPress posts published before implementing https. -->

<?php
  // Change the date to the day you switched to https
  // Insert the following within the WordPress theme file single.php
  $url_change_date = strtotime("8/16/2014");
  $post_date = strtotime(get_the_date());

  $sharing_url = get_permalink();

  if ($post_date < $url_change_date) {
    $url_prefix = "http://";

    $sharing_url = str_replace("https://",
                               "http://",
                               $sharing_url);
  }
?>
  
<!--  For Twitter, find the following line and add the data-url attr -->
<a href="https://twitter.com/share" data-url="<?php echo $sharing_url; ?>" class="twitter-share-button">Tweet</a>

<!--  For Facebook, find the following line and add the data-href attr -->
<div class="fb-like" data-href="<?php echo $sharing_url; ?>" data-layout="button_count" data-action="like" data-show-faces="false" data-share="false"></div>

<!--  For Google+, do nothing ... they did it right.
      The count will persist regardless of which protocol is used. -->

<!--  Modified slightly from the original source:
      http://encosia.com/preserving-social-sharing-counters-through-a-url-change/ -->