Dave @ Review.casa

By Dave Carr @Review.Casa

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Introduction – What is Monarch social sharing?

The Monarch WordPress social plugin allows you to add social share buttons and a social follow widget to your website to encourage your visitors to share your content on social media.

Monarch has been around for a while and is from the team over at Elegant themes.

Monarch Social Sharing Plugin For WordPress

Summary – Who is Monarch plugin not for?

If you want different social networks other than what is already in Monarch inserted into your website then you should look for a different plugin for WordPress as I don’t think Elegant themes focus is on Monarch at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong it’s got some really great features but Elegant themes are totally focused on Divi for the time being.

Summary – Who is Monarch plugin for?

WordPress plugin Monarch is for anyone who wants a social share plugin for their website.

If you want to add sharing buttons and a follow widget to your website then the Monarch social sharing plugin is probably going to work just fine for you.

And if you are thinking of buying Divi then you basically get it as a free bonus.

Why use a WordPress plugin for social share buttons?

We live in a world dominated by big companies where everything is constantly changing. So the code these companies use today is not guaranteed to stay the same long term. Look at the changes that have happened with Facebook in recent years.

If you were to code your share buttons manually and add the code to your pages when one of the websites changes something you will have to change your code or it could break your website.

Better to use a plugin for your WordPress social sharing and then you don’t have to maintain any code.

The pros and cons of Monarch plugin

What are the pros and cons of the Monarch WordPress plugin?

The cons

  • Needs a bit of an update as some of the networks are now gone (Google+ was shut down in 2019, Newsvine died in 2017, Delicious died in 2017 and Like died in 2015).

The pros

  • Over 20 social networks for social sharing WordPress
  • Over 35 social networks for social following
  • Floating sidebar
  • Above and/or below content
  • On images & videos
  • 6 automatic pop-up and fly-in triggers (Timed, bottom of post, after commenting, upon scroll, after purchasing and after inactivity)
  • Follow buttons in any widget area
  • Follow buttons in a shortcode
  • Customizable design
  • Statistics

Monarch pricing

Monarch is included with the Divi Theme from Elegant themes so You get Bloom, Monarch, Divi and the Extra theme.

The pricing for the bundle is $89 per year or $249 for a lifetime license.

Social sharing plugin improvements

  • Added new fonts to the List of Google Fonts (Jan 2021)
  • Added support for PHP 8.0 (Jan 2021)
  • Instagram Graph API (Jan 2021)
  • Added Support Centre (Sep 2020)
  • Security Update (March 2020)
  • Various bug fixes and improvements

What social media networks are included

Monarch includes the following social networks:

  • Facebook – The largest social network on the planet.
  • Twitter – A microblogging platform
  • Google+ – Died in 2019
  • Buffer – A post scheduling and analysis service
  • Digg – A news aggregator site
  • Evernote – An app designed for notetaking
  • Pinterest – A picture sharing site
  • Hacker News -A news aggregator site
  • Livejournal – A blogging platform
  • Newsvine – Died in 2017
  • AOL – An email service
  • Gmail – An email service
  • PrintFriendly – Turn any page into a printable PDF
  • Yahoo mail – An email service
  • Amazon – Share to Amazon
  • Delicious – Died in 2017
  • Reddit – A social news aggregator site
  • Vkontakte – A social network
  • Linkedin – A business social network
  • Myspace – A social network for Musicians and Artists
  • Blogger – A blogging platform
  • Stumbleupon – A bookmarking site
  • Tumblr – A blogging platform
  • Like – Died in 2015

My experience with Monarch social media sharing

I tried Monarch when I first purchased my membership to the Divi theme.

I put it on a website and I found that some of the networks in the plugin had died a few years previously which I really didn’t like they were still in the plugin.

Because I was using Bloom on the same website it seemed to slow it down to a crawl so after more testing I removed Monarch and kept Bloom as the main reason for the website was to build an email list.

I still won’t use both plugins on the same website as you can see at the top and bottom of this page I have social share buttons but they are Divi social sharing buttons from Pee Aye Creative as I’m using Bloom on this site.

Creating and adding share buttons

Monarch settings manage locations

The manage locations tab is shown in the image above.

The first step in adding share buttons in Monarch is to manage your locations.

You can choose from sidebar, inline, pop up, fly in and media.

You can only create one configuration for all your social sharing in Monarch.

Monarch settings networks

The manage networks screen is shown in the image above.

From the manage networks tab, you can add the networks you want to appear in your locations and then add your URLs or usernames.

Monarch settings display settings

The display settings for your location are on the corresponding tab as shown in the image above.

You can configure the design and display settings for each location and that’s it you’re done.

Your sharing buttons will now be displayed on your website.

Conclusion – Monarch review

Would I recommend Monarch?

No, I much prefer Divi social sharing buttons from Pee Aye.

It has a better user experience as you can use it in the Divi builder and design and place your social buttons visually which you can’t do with Monarch.

But Monarch has a whole load more features like pop-ups, fly-ins, timed display and all sorts of other eye-catching features.

If you don’t want to spend money on another plugin then by all means use Monarch for your share buttons and follow widget.

Monarch social share Alternative

Divi social sharing buttons

Divi social share buttons from Pee aye creative is a social media plugin you can insert and style in the Divi visual builder. It’s an excellent alternative to Monarch.

Full Divi social sharing buttons review