3 Useful WP Plugins to Add a Floating Social Sharing Bar Beside Your Content

Fans of Mashable will notice the floating social sharing bar that they are using at the side of their content. As you scroll down the page, the social sharing bar will move along and acts as a constant reminder to get you to share the content. If you are thinking of implementing such cool trick to your site, here are three plugins that you should not miss out.

1. Digg Digg

Digg Digg is a WordPress plugin that allows you to generate social media/sharing buttons for your site. It comes with plenty of customization options, and one of them is the ability to make your sharing bar floating.

In the backend, you can configure whether the social sharing bar is shown on the Home/Posts/Pages/Category and should it be displayed horizontally or vertically. The floating sidebar option is not enabled by default.
One good thing about DiggDigg is that it comes with a lazy loading setting that delays the loading of the social sharing button by 5 seconds. This will allow your page to finish loading first before the buttons are displayed.
The cons? It requires you to manually adjust the css positioning of the float bar, which means you can’t make it live immediately upon activating the plugin – unless you don’t mind the sharing bar floating at the middle of your content. In addition, if the end user screen resolution is 1024px and below, the sharing bar will be completely hidden. If you depend solely on this to get your content across various social sharing site, you are going to miss out on the small screen users.

2. GetSocial

GetSocial adds color to the floating bar so that it looks more colorful and vibrant.

As compared to Digg Digg, you are given lesser configuration option in the backend. You can’t change the css and there is only a section for you to adjust the positioning of the sharing bar. However, there are two advantages that it has over Digg Digg: the ability to add custom social sharing button and the ability to unhide itself when the user’s screen size is small.
When the user’s screen resolution is 1024px or less, the sharing bar will hide itself and show only a small “Share” strip. When you mouseover the strip, the sharing bar will pop out, allowing the user to share the content.

3. Sharebar

Of the three, my personal favorite is the Sharebar. While it does not comes with a CSS editing option, it does provide useful features that are not found in the abovementioned two plugins. You can configure to use big/small buttons for the share bar and you can even add your own buttons

The best thing about Sharebar is the ability to shrink itself into a small horizontal bar under the post title if the user’s screen is less than 1000px. Also, the plugin just works from the moment you activate it.


What are you still waiting for? Go grab one of these 3 plugins and start getting the floating share bar on your site now!