Dave @ Review.casa

By Dave Carr @Review.Casa

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Introduction – What is Divi social sharing buttons?

This WordPress social media plugin is a social media sharing plugin for the Divi theme. It allows you to add social sharing buttons to your Divi based website and use the Divi visual builder to style and place them on your website.

You might be thinking why would I need a different social sharing plugin when your subscription to the Divi theme comes with the plugin Monarch social (I will cover this late in this article).

Social share plugins are often confused with the social follow buttons that come with Divi.

I must state they are not the same thing!

The follow buttons allow you to add buttons for each of your social networks so people can follow your page or personal profile.

The social media share allows you to add buttons that enable social sharing of your content to their social networks.

Divi Social Sharing Buttons Plugin

WordPress social media with a plugin

If your goal is adding share buttons to your website is to increase engagement from social media then I recommend you use a plugin from a reputable studio that pushes out updates when needed because from time to time there will be issues as social networks change the way they do things.

Do you want to monitor if your custom code is working constantly?

Better to use a dedicated social sharing plugin that will be updated when things go wrong.

Also, people won’t take the time to copy and paste parts of your article to make social media content that’s why plugins for social sharing are so popular today.

With the click of a button, they can share your content on popular social networks.

Why encourage social sharing?

The traffic of course!

Any time you encourage someone to share your content on any website is a chance they will send you visitors (traffic). The more visitors you get and the longer they interact with your website the more Google will reward you for your effort in building a great website and filling it with good content.

The more visitors stick around the better your search engine rankings will increase. Google is all about providing its users with the best possible experience and it all starts with free traffic from other websites.

Summary – Who is this Divi plugin for social sharing for?

This social sharing plugin is for anyone who wants to add share buttons to their Divi based website without it slowing down your site.

It’s the only plugin I’ve tested that you can add social sharing buttons and style them through the Divi builder.

It’s great because it doesn’t break up your workflow and because it’s designed to be used with Divi there is less that can go wrong.

The pros and cons of this social media plugin for Divi

The Cons

This social follow buttons can only be used with Divi

The Pros

  • Easily add share buttons to your website.
  • Increase social media engagement.
  • Style in the Divi builder.
  • Place anywhere on your website through the Divi builder.

Improvements to this Divi plugin for social media sharing

  • Support for sites running PHP 8.0+ (March 2022)
  • Bug fixes and improvements (September 2021)
  • Fixed sharing URL not opening share screen inside the LinkedIn app (September 2021)
  • Fixed columns issue when icon font size is set below 19px (September 2021)
  • Fixed issue with Divi Builder not loading when excerpts were not found (August 2021)
  • Strip all HTML tags from excerpts. (August 2021)
  • New custom global and individual network override sharing options (July 2021)
  • New custom title text sharing option (July 2021)
  • Added new custom text sharing option (July 2021)
  • Added new custom image sharing option (July 2021)
  • New custom URL sharing option (July 2021)
  • Added Open Graph tags (July 2021)
  • Updated responsive layout system (July 2021)
  • New number of columns setting for the icons only, not text layout (July 2021)
  • New icon width setting with equalizing and fixed options (July 2021)
  • New layout: Icon right, text left (July 2021)
  • Compatibility with the Divi builder plugin (July 2021)
  • New title text option with design settings (July 2021)
  • New Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Gab, MeWe and Copy URL networks (July 2021)
  • Performance enhancements (July 2021)

Which social media networks are included

The social media networks included in this plugin for social sharing are:

  • Facebook – The biggest and most popular social network in the world with nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population as users. The undisputed king of social media.
  • Messenger (Facebook) – Messenger is Facebook’s live chat software that compliments the Facebook social network.
  • Twitter – Is a microblogging and social networking platform it is the 9th most visited website globally. A huge player in social media.
  • Pinterest – Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service designed to enable the saving and discovery of information on the internet using images – Wikipedia
  • LinkedIn – Professional social networking and career development social network.
  • WhatsApp – Owned by Meta (the owners of Facebook) WhatsApp is another instant messenger app.
  • Tumblr – Tumblr is a blogging platform and social network currently owned by Automattic (The company behind WordPress).
  • Reddit – Reddit is a social media platform that allows users to post content and have other people give their views.
  • Telegram – Telegram is another instant messenger service.
  • Gab – Gab is a social media microblogging platform similar to Twitter and champions free speech.
  • MeWe- MeWe is another social media network but they champion free speech and privacy.
  • Email
  • Copy URL

So you get all the popular social media networks that are most likely to drive a bit of traffic to your websites included in one plugin.

You just need to add the ones you want and then configure the button settings.

My experience with social sharing buttons

I use the share buttons plugin for Divi on my websites and I include it with clients’ sites when I build them to give them the option of adding social sharing to the most popular social media networks on their blogs if they choose to.

I have tried other social media plugins in the past and found they slowed down the site too much. The first of the WordPress plugins I tried was Monarch WordPress social that’s included with your Divi membership and no matter which settings I tried I couldn’t get it to the point where I was satisfied with the results (there was always a huge lag in speed).

This social plugin adds the buttons you need (the most popular networks) and doesn’t slow down your site. If you look at the top and bottom of this post you will see the share icons for the social media networks that I’ve included (I’ve included most I think lol. In for a penny in for a pound as my gran used to say).

Any way you can make it easier to do something then it’s infinitely more likely to happen especially in this frantically hectic world we live in today where everyone is “too busy” and let’s face it too lazy to do anything.

I found the plugin easy to use and I like the fact it can be used in the Divi builder meaning it doesn’t disrupt your chosen workflow.

Using the Divi plugin for social sharing buttons

The new Divi module is added like any other, just search for it and select it in the insert module panel as shown in the image below.

add buttons

In the new panel, select “add new item” as shown in the image below.

You can see the button that’s added to your page above.

A Facebook button with the label “share on Facebook” will be added to your page and a new panel will be opened for you to style the button.

The new panel is shown below.

You then configure the settings for each button as you add them. And when you have all the networks you want to be added save the Divi module and Divi page like you would any other.

It really is that easy to add the sharing buttons to your Divi based website.

Why not use Monarch social sharing plugin

As I said earlier in this article I tried Monarch social sharing because it comes free with your Divi theme subscription. Don’t get me wrong Monarch is a great plugin especially if you are looking for a free option.

But as a web designer and website speed optimiser I’m always looking to shave more time off all the website loading times that I build.

So on testing, I found that the Monarch social media plugin slowed down my website too much!

It probably wasn’t an issue with Monarch but the social networks scripts it was trying to load but I spent a couple of hours messing about with it and just didn’t have any time left so I deleted it.

Conclusion – is this plugin worth it?

Would I recommend this social media plugin?

Yes, I would as I’ve tried a few and this is the only one that only marginally slows down your Divi site.

I tested Monarch from Elegant themes a long time ago and it slowed down my site enough for me not to want to use it again! Monarch also can’t be used in the Divi visual builder.

This plugin from Pee aye creative allows you to style and add social share buttons in the Divi builder. It might slow your site down marginally but that is from scripts hosted on Facebook (I tested it).

If you use Divi and want a simple way to add social media buttons to your website then this is the plugin for you.

Share buttons Alternative

Monarch

Monarch is a social sharing plugin from elegant themes it allows you to insert buttons into your pages and posts so people can share your content on the most popular social networks.

Full Monarch Review