Floating Social Bar – Best Social Media Plugin for WordPress
Floating social bar is the best social media plugin for WordPress that enables you to highlight your social media visibility without affecting your website speed. If you are searching the best social media plugin for WordPress, you do not have to look further.
Download Floating Social Bar – It’s Free
This plugin adds a horizontal share bar on your posts and pages. The floating technique persuades your users to share the content. It results in an increase of social media shares.
Best social media plugin for WordPress?
Unlike other social media plugins for WordPress, I want to keep the site fast and simple. You do not have to add social media buttons for all type of social networks. Therefore, this plugin offers share buttons for Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Floating Social Bar loads the scripts when it is essential. None of the social media scripts loaded on the beginning of page load. Instead, it shows a copy image with all the share counts. It uses socialite technique that loads scripts when the user brings the mouse over the button. So it will allow the user to load his website as fast as it would load without any social media plugins.
Yes, it means that this plugin works faster and better than other social media plugins including DiggDigg and Jetpack social plugin and other social media plugins for WordPress etc.
It is faster than if you try to paste social buttons within your WP theme directly.
How to Install Floating Social Bar in WordPress
First of all, you need to install and activate Floating Social Bar plugin from your WordPress admin.
After activation, this plugin will add to your menu under Settings > Floating Social Bar.
In order to add the floating social share bar to your posts and pages. You need to drag and drop the available social buttons in the enabled social services area. You can set the order as you wish to display them. Next, add your Twitter ID in the field in the following format Greenhatexpert.
The title for the share bar will only show up if there is enough space for it. If you will use all the sharing button, then there is a chance that you will not get the title due to width issue.
You can select the post types where you want to add the floating social share bar including pages, posts and any other custom page.
The cache interval field allows this plugin to become the most efficient. I suggest that you do not change this number until you know what you are doing. Here is how it works. By default, this plugin will get the social media count from the APIs and will store it in a cache for 30 minutes. It will get count for the post when it is loaded to reduce the server load.
For example, if no one is visiting your old post, like two years old, then this plugin will not use or waste your server resources for that post. It only gets the count right when a user explores the post or page.
There are some other fields that can make the bar static, if you do not want it to float. You can change the position to above the content, below the content or both.
Simply check the box to make the bar static.
The checkbox will disable socialite basically stops the flickering that some users do not want. So it will not load any scripts and open the share box in the new window.
Now go to your post page, you will get a horizontal share bar there.
FAQ
Before asking for support, you need to go through the frequently asked question about Floating Social Bar plugin.
Why is there no count on my button?
There were a lot of requests to hide the count if it is 0. You will see the count when it is at least 1 or higher.
Can I hide the social bar on specific posts or pages?
Yes, you can hide the floating social bar on specific pages or posts as you wish. You need to visit the edit screen of your post where you will see a metabox to hide the social share bar.
Is there a template tag for this plugin?
Yes, there are both a shortcode and a template tag. If you want to customize where the floating social bar is shown in your theme, you can use the template tag like this:
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<?php if ( function_exists( 'floating_social_bar' ) ) floating_social_bar( array ( 'facebook' => true, 'twitter' => true ) ); ?> |
Using template tag, you can pass in an array of arguments to denote which social services you want to display. The order in which the services will be entered will be the order in which they are shown. The following keys are available for use:
To use the shortcode, simply paste something like this:
[fsb-social-bar facebook=”true” twitter=”true”]
Support
The developers have tested this plugin on different browser and server environments. However, it is still not possible to test it for every user. If you are still facing any problem, you need to use WordPress.org Support Forums.
Conclusion
Social media share buttons should be available for every website. But you need to know that it can impact on the speed of your website.
At Green hat Expert, I have created this post to maximize your social media visibility without impacting the website speed.
Floating social bar is a light weight plugin for WordPress site which adds a horizontal floating share bar on your blog pages, posts and other types.
It has a floating ability has an eye catching bar to get you maximum shares.
What are you waiting for? Download Floating Social Bar
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Arsalan Rauf is an entrepreneur, freelancer, creative writer, and also a fountainhead of Green Hat Expert. Additionally, he is also an eminent researcher of Blogging, SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, premium accounts, codes, links, tips and tricks, etc.