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You are here: Home / Archives for Plugin

Plugin

WordPress Social Share Buttons and Follow Me Widget

Filed Under: WordPress Plugins July 12, 2013

Using social share buttons in WordPress is almost a must have for search engine optimization and getting traffic for your website.

Having a quick and easy way for your visitors to follow you on these social networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and Google+  is just as important.

I have used several plugins to get this working and most of them do a great job.

AA's Digg Digg Alternative

I used the Digg Digg Alternative as one of the more recent ones before I changed to Flare (more on that later on).

It looks good as a floating sidebar and you can set the top and side offset to fit your theme layout.

AA  Digg Digg Alternative

The reason fore using the alternative instead of the original Digg Digg plugin was based on performance in loading time.

Shareaholic – Sexy Bookmarks

This plugin is widely used but it slowed down my site, doesn't mean it will do the same with yours, still looks good.

shareaholic sexy bookmarks

On the WordPress Plugin site is shown now as Shareaholic | share buttons & related content as it is now extended to show related posts as well.

Flare – Social Share Buttons, Bar & Follow Widget

Earlier this week I was reading the Traffic Generation Cafe Blog and I saw this great looking, very slick share buttons. I was only when I scrolled down, this sidebar appeared with those share buttons.

So I looked at the source code to find out what she was using to do this, and after a short investigation I found out it was a plugin called Flare.

I switched over and removed all others I was using, so you can now see the plugin active on this website.

social media plugin flare working

Installing and Configuring Flare Social Share Buttons and Icons

Installing flare is a breeze, just go to Plugins -> Add New and search for Flare.
Find it, install it and activate it, first steps done.

Now you will find a new Menu option in you Dashboard called Flare, click on the Share option and set your options.

Flare placement options

The first option you need to set is where your social share buttons and sidebar will appear on you website.

I choose to show them on top, on bottom and floating, all left aligned to fit the theme layout.

Next step: Your styling Options

Flare Styling Options

You can choose the button type, round, square, etc.

Choose what you want to show, like the counters of how many shares you got, when you want them to show up and if you want your visitors to have the possibility to close the sidebar.

Add options for flare Social Share Buttons

Upon fist installation you only see Twitter and Facebook buttons, click the big + button to add more.

Extra options social media flare

Last thing you need to do is decided when you want these social share buttons to be shown, on posts is standard. For this site with a lot of pages I also want them to show up on pages.

Flare post and pages placement options

Save it all and check if it works as expected.

Configuring Flare Follow Me Widget

If you are done with the Social Share Buttons, you can start with the widget and configure the follow me options.

Got to Flare and choose Follow, it should show you a screen like this one.

Flare follow me bar

Again follow the instructions and push the plus button for more.

Configure your settings with things like your Twitter user name, your Google+ profile, your Facebook profile page and every other thing you want to show.

Facebook follow button

Once you get all the options done and saved, go to the widgets (Appearance -> Widgets) and place it on your sidebar.

Flare follow me widget

I have set it up with a bigger then standard icon and with more spacing.

Flare follow me widget layout

I like the cleanliness of the layout and all the options it gave me.

How about you? What is your favorite WordPress social sharing buttons plugin and why?

Update: How to remove the purple new Flare plugin button.

The new version of the Flare plugin shows you a purple button that brings you to the site of the plugin authors.

Flare Purple Button and Icon

Many people, me included, don't like this new button.

It might be a good idea to promote your work and get lots of inbound links, but if you cannot choose to opt-out of that link, that is a bad thing.

There is a way though to hide the buttons and icons.

Paste this code into the style sheet of you theme:

/* Remove Filament Icon
———————————————————— */
.flare-flyout-filament {display:none !important}
.button-type-filament {display:none !important}

Update 2:

With the new version (1.2.4) you now have the option to hide the purple button by deselecting the Show Love checkbox!

flare-filament-option

Thank You http://www.dtelepathy.com/ for listening to and acting upon your plugin users request!

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Plugins Tagged With: Follow, Plugin, Share, Social 16 Comments

How to Install 21 WordPress Plugins in 5 Minutes

Filed Under: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Setup July 19, 2013

Once you have completed the basic setup of your WordPress website, it's time to add more functions by installing plugins.

Here is a basic list of plugins that I integrate into every WordPress website I build.

Update: Since I wrote this post in 2010 several plugins have changed or have been surpassed by newer better plugins. That is why I created this new list (in alphabetical order).

Basic WordPress Plugins List

BackWPup
Contact Form 7
Fancybox for WordPress
Flare
Google XML Sitemaps
Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin
Limit Login Attempts
No Self Pings
nrelate Related Content
PS Auto Sitemap
Quick Adsense
Revision Control
Simple Trackback Validation with Topsy Blocker
Subscribe To Comments
W3 Total Cache
Wordfence Security
Wordpress Popular Posts
Wordpress Seo
WP Updates Notifier
WP-Optimize

A number of the old plugins are no longer needed as a lot of their functions are now build into the core of WordPress, other ones are integrated into the Genesis (aff)  Theme Framework that is used on this site.

If you need / want more details on each plugin check out 20 Basic WordPress Plugins.

Old Basic WordPress Plugins List

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator Replaced by PS Automap Sitemap
FD Feedburner Plugin Integrated in Genesis (aff)
Flexi Pages Widget Build into WordPress core custom menu's and Genesis
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2 Replaced by WordPress SEO
My Page Order Build into WordPress core custom menu's
NextGEN Gallery (Only used for Photo galleries, non standard function)
Related Posts Replace by nrelate Relatec Content (with thumbnails)
Robots Meta Integrated in WordPress SEO
Secure Files Replaced by WordFence
SEO Slugs Now done manually for more control
Subscribe To Comments
WordPress Automatic Upgrade Now done with InfinteWP (Remote update software + WordPress client)
WordPress Database Backup Replaced by BackWPUp for more options
WordPress File Monitor Replaced by WordFence
WP-DBManager Replaced by WP-Optimize a lighter version that works great
WP-SpamFree Replaced by Growmap Anti Spam
Fancybox Fancybox for WordPress, works better with WordPress 3.x
WP Security Scan Replaced by WordFence
W3 Total Cache

Yes, you counted correctly, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin, you know how difficult a task it was to install these.

Search for the plugin on wordpress.org, click the install button, confirm that the installation was successful and activate the plugin.

Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!

Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac, and it is a great time-saver.

This is always the first plugin I install using the standard process:

Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate Process

Once you have done this, the magic begins. Go to the option “Plugin Central” under the Plugins menu.

The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field where you can paste the list shown above.
Of course, you can just type the names of other plugins you want to install.

Once you are satisfied with your list, click the “Install Plugins” button.

Depending on your host's security settings, it might ask you for your FTP data such as FTP site, username and password. Or,  it will start to work directly.

The process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting (aff) environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes under two minutes for all 20 plugins.

After the whole process has ran, you need to active all of the plugins, which takes about four clicks.

Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin), choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.

Now all of your plugins are active. Some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right off the bat.

Configuring the plugins will take some time, but you just saved a lot of time on the installation, so go ahead and set all the options that you want. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but now it's time for you to take action!

Affiliate Link Disclosures

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Setup Tagged With: CMS, Plugin, wordpress 27 Comments

Finding the Right WordPress Pages Ordering Plugin

Filed Under: Weblog News, WordPress CMS October 5, 2008

Running a WordPress Based website produces a Lot of Pages.

But WordPress does not allow you to assign Pages to Categories, But this might be a great function to reduce the number of Links in your Page Menu.

So currently I am looking at the new Plugins from Andy Staines who creates some great Plugins like the "Page Category Plus"
Once I figured out how to use it, you will find the examples and Configuration and Usage Instructions on the Pages..

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: Weblog News, WordPress CMS Tagged With: Ordering, Pages, Plugin, wordpress Leave a Comment

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