Social bookmarking has cemented itself as a nearly integral part of the web and has revolutionized how we not only pass along news, information and other tidbits but how we obtain it as well. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon or any of the other seemingly countless sites out there, web surfers are using these services to get the word out about what they are interested in. If you are a blogger, or more specifically – a Wordpress user, you are almost doing yourself (and your blog) a disservice by not giving your users the option to share your articles with their friends, family and internet pals abroad.
In making my daily blog rounds, it seems like there are a few plugins, such as Sexybookmarks, that have a pretty large share of the Social Bookmarking market but there are quite a few very nice plugins (and some that leave a lot of be desired) that handle the task quite handily. In this article, I will go through a fistful of Social Bookmarking plugins for Wordpress and cover the good, the bad and maybe even a little bit of the ugly. If you aren’t currently using a Social Bookmarking plugin, then I hope this serves as a great starting place for you. If you already have one in place, take a look around you may find a better alternative.
So without further, adieu..
Addmarx isn’t one of the best looking SB plugins out there but it does offer a fair number of features and customizations. Via clicking (or rolling over if you choose to set it up that way) the ‘Share/Bookmark’ button, the user is presented with a smooth dropdown box giving them the ability to bookmark the article using quite a few SB apps, share the article across a respectable number of SB sites, e-mail the article or get an HTML formatted (just cut-and-paste) link to the article. This drop down can be placed (via the plugin admin options) at the bottom of a post, the bottom of front page posts or the bottom of pages. You can also use the Addmarx dropdown box as a widget in lieu of placing it on each post.
Admins can customize the color of the drop down box as well as choose from a handful of different ‘Share’ buttons on a remote customization page. Once finished customizing, the admin then copy/pastes generated code in to a text box on the plugins admin page. There is also an interesting option to give the drop down extra spacing on sites with Flash/video to correct a possible browser bug.
All-in-all, Addmarx isn’t a bad choice however one thing I didn’t like is the fact that you cannot edit/remove/add SB sites to the menu which is something that is pretty common amongst competing plugins. I also don’t like that you cannot place the ‘Share’ button anywhere except at the bottom of an article/page. There is no option to pick up a site’s RSS feed either which is a major oversight in my opinion.
AddToAny : Share/Bookmark/Email
AddToAny is one of the more popular SB plugins out there and with good reason. It is comprehensive, robust, bursting with options and very easy to use from both an admin and end-user standpoint. By default, the plugin places a small ‘Share/Save’ bar at the bottom of your posts that, when rolled over, reveals a nice, cleanly designed drop down menu featuring the most popular SB sites and an arrow that expands to reveal a list of nearly 100 SB sites. Nice! Clicking on the ‘E-Mail’ tab gives the user the ability to e-mail a link to your article via Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, GMail or Hotmail as well as stand-alone e-mail applications such as Outlook and Thunderbird with just one click.
The options available for AddToAny is where it really shines. There are several different ‘Share/Save’ bar variations to choose from (including text-only and the ability to use your own custom image) or you can bypass placing the bar on your posts and choose from a massive list of sites to display individually on your posts. There is an easy-to-use menu styler that allows you to customize the color scheme of the drop down box. AddToAny also has its own API to encourage developers to make enhancements to what is already a great plugin.
Out of all of the SB plugins out there, AddToAny is the most complete package I have come across. Just in the number of bookmarking sites it offers alone, AddToAny stands out from the crowd. Even still, the drop down box is a little too clunky for me personally and just like with Addmarx an RSS feed selection is not available.
All-In-One Bookmarking Button is a very simple Social Bookmarking plugin. Almost too simple, in fact I barely consider it a plugin. It is certainly lightweight in and of itself, simply placing a clickable button at the bottom of your posts. When the user clicks the button they are taken to a separate site (SocialMarker) where they then choose which of 50 SB sites to submit the article to. The user can also title their link, include a brief statement about the article and add tags for those searching the SocialMarker site.
I Love Social Bookmarking is another relatively simple SB plugin out there but, unfortunately, it leaves some to be desired. By rolling over a link placed at the bottom of each of your posts, the user is presented with a drop down menu of SB sites (and, thankfully, RSS) to share the article with. The downside is that there are only a small number of SB sites that this plugin is compatible with. Admins have the ability to change some standard options including which SB sites to offer as well as the color scheme and even the font of the drop down box. I personally wasn’t a huge fan of this plugin mostly due to its limitations and lack of options and the small list of sites to submit an article to is a major drawback as well.
S-Buttonz is a basic SB plugin that is somewhat limited in features but if you are looking for a simple solution, this may be a good route for you. Currently, S-ButtonZ only gives admins the option of adding links for Digg, Facebook, dZone, Reddit and Yahoo! Buzz – definitely a downside. The admin panel gives you options specific to each of these sites as well as button/graphic options and placement options. Compared to other SB plugin options, this is probably one you won’t be missing out on if you choose to go in a different direction.
SexyBookmarks is probably the most popular SB plugin amongst design bloggers and it lives up to the hype. It is the most visually attractive as well a the most customizable SB plugin I’ve come across. Admins have the ability to choose from over 70 social bookmarking sites (including RSS, yay!) to display, all in the form of a very attractive interface where the site’s icon ‘pops up’ when rolled over by the user. The admin panel is bursting with options including the ability to enter your Twitter ID, choose a URL shortener for automatically shortening links to your articles, category and media type variables, nofollow links, placement options and jQuery options as well.
Really the only thing I don’t like about SexyBookmarks is when you have more than one row of icons. The user needs to scroll over the icon set to see the additional icons revealed below the top line. Maybe I’m just being nitpicky but if your theme has a narrow content area, this may be confusing to users if they don’t immediately see the SB site they want to share your article with on the top line of options. Even so, SexyBookmarks is the best SB plugin I’ve yet to come across and gets my pick as the ‘must-have’ SB plugin.
I would love to tell you about ShareButtons but it apparently isn’t working. The plugin seemingly relies on a third-party site (picturesurf.org) to allow users to share your articles and – guess what? – picturesurf.org is offline. According to Host-Tracker, it’s down/timing out all over the world so I guess so much for that.
With the number of SB plugins out there are are literally plug-and-play, I was disappointed to find that in order to utilize Socbookmark, the admin must cut-and-paste code in to a theme file in order for it to work. So disappointed, in fact, that I’m not even going to mess with it. If just installing the plugin requires the effort of editing code, then I don’t even want to know what it takes to edit/customize it. Next.
Sociofluid is a nice looking, functional SB plugin that should fit the bill for most users. It features a smaller number of SB sites compared to other plugins but does output the options in a nice display. When rolling over the share icons at the bottom of an article, the selected icon “grows” (much like on a Mac) and produces the name of the site in text below the icon. I don’t like how this display turns out at the text often overlaps the icon and presents the opportunity to be somewhat confusing.
On the admin end, you can choose to display buttons at the top or bottom of your articles, open links in the existing or new window/tab, select the size of the icons both stagnant and when rolled over and whether or not the icon “grows” up or down. You can also use your own custom CSS styling for the <DIV> that contains the icons.
All in all, I like this plugin but the overlapping text bit I mentioned before does take some attractiveness/professionalism away from the appearance of the plugin.
Submit To Any is a very basic SB plugin that is ready to go right out of the shoot. Sounds nice but there are no options and no real depth to the plugin. Featuring only 8 SB sites (if you include RSS) to submit to, Submit To Any does not give you the option to add additional SB sites and, as you can see in the image above, one of the icons shows as a broken image – not good. The plugin also inserts a by-line for itself beneath the icon bar which takes a little away from things on the aesthetics side as well.
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