A few weeks ago, someone in my Facebook network asked what best social sharing button plugins were out there for WordPress. I loved the simplicity of JetPack’s Publicize and the fact that it was developed by Automattic programmers (the developers of WordPress); however, either my host settings or some plugin rendered the sharing popup useless (thanks to Michael Stelzner for pointing that out!). I’m still using the plugin to push content to the social networks, but I’m not utilizing the sharing buttons on the site any longer.
We also used to use the Flare plugin which was quite stunning. However, the company abandoned the plugin and is now selling their social share buttons as a subscription. The service didn’t work as well and I kept running into more and more issues so I abandoned it and the plugin. Too bad since one of the great features was that I could get the total shares for any post and I developed some code to post them elsewhere in the template to entice more people to read.
So, the hunt was on for a great WordPress plugin that would provide a nice customizable button bar and a slew of options. I did a lot of reading and testing of dozens of plugins and products and it call ended in the purchase of the Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress.
The plugin isn’t the easiest to setup and customize, but the internal wizard is simple and the advanced options are plentiful, including social follow widgets and even some share analytics.
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