I got a bit derailed in my “action a day” to improve my blog. So this is action #9 and I’ll have to catch up this week.
Earlier this month I installed a new social sharing plugin that floats on the left side of my posts. I love it! But as it turns out I forgot some people are on much smaller screens and for anyone with a screen size of smaller than 1000px or so it was floating over top of my content like this:
Ick!! Thankfully my readers alerted me and I had planned to go on a search for alternatives.
But I didn’t have to! Thanks to a combination of insomnia and a super-hyper-playful-new-kitten, I ended up awake late tonight and reading a few blogs I’m following on Facebook. And what luck! I ran into Danielle McGaw’s blog that had the perfect plugin. (Thank you, Danielle!) I sat here and resized my window a few times to make sure — wide, I see the sharing buttons; skinny, they disappear!
So I’ve switched and am now running Share Bar which is smarter and hides if you’re on a smaller screen or have the window smaller.
If you’re looking for a plugin to add a float box with sharing buttons to your posts, this one is easy to setup and customize (easier than the other one I was using), and works nicely.
My lesson for today: pay attention to visitor feedback and make changes when needed. I don’t want to lose any readers, do you? :)
Michelle has been online since the late 80s, creating websites since the early 90s, and has coded thousands of web pages in that time. She's worked as a virtual assistant and website designer for small business owners including marketers, authors, coaches, crafters, and other solopreneuers.
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Glad you liked it Michelle. I was using sexy bookmarks (I see you still have that too) but for some reason it kept messing up on my blog. I deleted it because I’m trying to minimize the plugins that I use to only those I need. But Iove ShareBar. I did a post about some cool Comment plugins too.
Twitter: MichelleShaeffr
says:
Good idea. :) I’ll have to go checkout the comment plugin post. Off to your blog!
Michelle and Daniel,
Thanks I was going to add the other plugin, you saved me some time. I I did some checking on sexy bookmarks and found that it does slow down load time. I have been using OnlyWire and so far so good.
Twitter: MichelleShaeffr
says:
I may deactivate Sexy Bookmarks. I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll have to watch loading time. Have you noticed the same slowness when it’s run together with a caching plugin?
Hey Guys,
This is Jay from Shareaholic, the makers of SexyBookmarks.
@SheilaAtwood based on your checking, can you tell us what is slow? we’d love to fix it. For the past couple of releases we’ve been making a lot of upgrades to speed up things. Supporting huge icons doesn’t make it easy :)
@Danielle happy to help. let us know. if you are using the Arras theme, a fix for that was rolled out recently.
Here to help!
http://getsatisfaction.com/shareaholic
Twitter: MichelleShaeffr
says:
Hi Jay, thanks for letting us know. :) I haven’t seen the slowness issue myself but I run a cache plugin so that helps overall with speed. I like the animations and haven’t let go of it yet because it’s just fun. LOL
I know I used to use a 15 inch monitor for around 7 years until I finally bought something bigger. I am glad you were able to find a solution to the plugins overlapping problem Michelle. What size monitor do you have yourself?
- Robert
Twitter: MichelleShaeffr
says:
Hi Robert, I have a 14″ on my notebook and 22″ on my desktop.