Adding a floating social share bar can greatly improve your content’s visibility and encourage readers to promote it on social media. A floating bar stays with the user as they scroll, making it easy to share content at any point.
While running our own sites, we have seen the impact of floating social share bars in driving engagement and increasing traffic. By strategically adding this feature to our websites, we have observed a noticeable boost in social shares and a wider reach for our content.
Whether you’re running a blog or a business, adding a floating social share bar can be a simple way to encourage engagement and expand your online presence.
In this article, we will guide you through the process of adding a floating social share bar to your WordPress site. Our step-by-step instructions make it simple even for beginners.
Why Add a Floating Social Share Bar in WordPress?
Adding a prominent social share bar makes it easy for visitors to share your content on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. By keeping this bar visible while scrolling, you provide a convenient way for users to share your content at any time.
This can lead to increased engagement, traffic, and brand awareness. Plus, it can motivate users to leave comments and likes or follow your updates.
Other than that, a floating social share bar can indirectly improve your website’s rankings by increasing social signals. When users share your content on social media, it generates backlinks to your website, which can positively impact your search engine rankings.
Having said that, let’s take a look at how to easily add a floating social share bar in WordPress. In this tutorial, we will be discussing a code and plugin method. You can use the links below to jump to the approach of your choice:
Method 1: Add a Floating Social Share Bar With WPCode
If you are looking for a customizable and easy way to add a floating social share bar in WordPress, then this method is for you.
For this approach, we will be using WPCode because it is the best WordPress code snippets plugin on the market. For more information on this tool, check out our full WPCode review.
WPCode has an extensive library of pre-made code snippets, including a ready-to-use solution for adding a floating social share bar. This eliminates the need for custom coding and makes it easy to implement this feature on your website.
First, you need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more information, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: WPCode has a free version. However, to unlock the code snippets library, you will need the plugin’s pro plan.
Upon activation, head over to the Code Snippets » + Add Snippet page from the WordPress dashboard and use the search box to locate the ‘Floating Social Media Icons’ snippet.
Once you do that, just click the ‘Use snippet’ button under it.
This will open the ‘Edit Snippet’ page on your screen. You will notice that the code snippet for the floating social share bar, with links to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, has already been added to the ‘Code Preview’ box.
You can now use the code snippet as it is or scroll down and change the position, margin, width, background color, height, and border radius for the icons.
For instance, the background color for these social media icons is black by default. However, you can replace it with the hex code of a color that better matches your brand.
After that, scroll back to the top and toggle the ‘Inactive’ switch to ‘Active.’
Then, click the ‘Update’ button to store your settings and add a floating social share bar.
You can now visit your website to see the social media icons in action.
Here is how it looked on our demo website.
Method 2: Add a Floating Social Share Bar With a Plugin
If you don’t want to use custom code on your website, then this method is for you. That said, keep in mind that you won’t get as many customization options with this approach.
First, you need to install and activate the Floating Social Share Icons plugin. For details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, visit the Floating Links & Social Icons page from the WordPress dashboard. By default, the plugin will automatically add floating icons that allow users to visit the home page, the next post, the previous post, the top of the page, and the bottom of the page and copy the current URL.
However, if you don’t need any of these functionalities, then you can toggle the switch off for these options. Once you do that, your changes will be synced automatically.
After that, head to the Floating Links & Social Icons » Social Icons page from the admin sidebar.
To customize your floating social share bar, simply toggle the switch next to the desired social media platforms. This will make the corresponding icons appear on your bar, allowing visitors to easily share your content.
Your settings will be saved automatically once you make the changes.
Then, you can visit your WordPress site to see the floating social share bar in action.
Bonus: Add a Floating Social Bar in WordPress
If you want, you can also add a floating social bar with follow buttons in WordPress.
This allows visitors to easily connect with your social media profiles and stay updated on your latest news and events. By making it convenient for users to follow you on social media, you can expand your reach and foster a dedicated community.
To do this, you will need OptinMonster, which is the best lead generation tool on the market. Plus, it comes with a premade template to create a floating social bar.
First, visit the OptinMonster website and sign up for an account. Remember that you will need to purchase the Basic plan because it includes the Floating Bar campaign type.
Then, head to your WordPress dashboard to install and activate the OptinMonster connector plugin. For details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you will see the welcome screen and the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Connect Your Existing Account’ button.
You can then follow the on-screen prompts to connect your OptinMonster account with WordPress.
Once that is done, head over to the OptinMonster » Templates page from the WordPress dashboard and select ‘Floating Bar’ as the campaign type.
Next, click the ‘Use Template’ button for the ‘Follow on Social Media’ template. This will open a prompt where you must add a name for the campaign you are about to create.
OptinMonster’s drag-and-drop builder will now launch on your screen.
This is where you can design your floating bar.
The plugin offers different blocks that you can simply drag and drop onto the template. For instance, you can add an image, text, button, and more to your social media bar.
To learn more, see our tutorial on how to add an alert bar in WordPress.
After that, click on the social media follow buttons within the floating bar. This will open some new settings in the left column.
Here, you can add the URL for your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages accordingly.
Once you are done, switch to the ‘Publish’ tab from the top and change the campaign status to ‘Publish’. Then, you will need to click the ‘Save’ button and close the visual builder.
You can now visit your WordPress site to view the floating social bar in action.
We hope that this article helped you learn how to add a floating social share bar in WordPress You may also want to see our beginner’s guide on how to add social share buttons in WordPress and our top picks for the best social media plugins to grow your site.
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zak
What social media plugin do you use on this site? Because it looks different from you floating social share bar?
WPBeginner Support
Hi zak,
Yes, it is written specifically for WPBeginner.
Admin
Stephanie
How do you add the sharing buttons to the bottom of the post instead of the top?
Thanks
Ralph Eastwood
I’ve just installed the plugin. Looks nice. Is there a way to have to bar at the bottom of the post? It seems better sense to have it there. People are going to share a post once they’ve read it and think there’s value – I don’t want to rely on them scrolling all the way back to the top just to share!
Laura
I have installed, activated and added Facebook to the ‘enabled social services’ box. I don’t have a Twitter user account so left that part blank. I saved the settings but the Facebook tab does not appear on my website! Did I miss something? Thanks
sham
My social count is back to zero after migrate to HTTPS. How to fix this?
Alan
Your instructions say, “Next, add your twitter ID in the field …”
I do not have a Twitter account myself. Can I not use this plugin without joining Twitter? (I am on Facebook and LinkedIn.)
Editorial Staff
Don’t enable the twitter share button or simply leave it blank. It allows you to get more followers if you enter the twitter ID there.
Admin
Siska
I would like to use this pluging, but i can´t find a way to change the bakground colour…Mi web it´s not white.
Siska
I would like to use this pluging, but i can´t find a way to change the bakground colour…Mi web it´s not white
WPBeginner Support
Try adding this in your theme’s stylesheet:
#fsb-social-bar { border-bottom: 1px solid #f1f1f1; border-top: 1px solid #f1f1f1; padding: 10px 0; margin: 0px 0 20px 0; float: left; background: #222; position: relative; clear: both; }1-click Use in WordPress
Admin
Jean
Thanks for this! How would you go about to tracking the shares as a goal in Google Analytics?
Elisa
Error when pressing the button google +1. I get a red triangle and not resolve it.
Help !!!
Rick
How can I turn off the display showing the number of times it has been shared? I do not want the count of shares to be shown.
Rebecca
Hi, nice plugin. I’m having an issue though, when I use the “pin it” button, it crops the photo. How can I avoid that?
Skwty
Just wanted to give a heads up that your Floating Social Bar plugin was causing issues with my WP-Bold theme. It would remove the excerpt from the widget that I used to display related content in the sidebar. The title was there, but only on the single.php would the excerpt disappear. Solostream support mentioned that I should say something. I switched to another plugin because of it, but would much rather use the Floating Social Bar.
Thanks!
Zomi Daily
Can you please include Facebook Share button, please?
Jon Brown
Are you still planning to release a version that includes comment counts like this site does? Even if not ready for release is that code public?
Jorge
Hi! Thanks for the great plugin. I have some questions when people press like or +1 do they share the post in my blog too? How can people share my content from the social bar? What is the capital of North Dakota
Thanks again!
Julius
Great plugin, but unfortunately it consumes lots of resources. P3 plugin shows that it consumes 51% of all my plugins (I have 12 plugins).
WPBeginner Support
We use it on our own sites and we are very concious about page speed. As for P3 plugin, the test results can be affected by many factors such as other services running on your server, if you are on a shared server, this will also affect results.
Admin
Urmet
Great plugin – I would like to know one thing – can I have it this way that the counter loads immediately – like you have it on your own page – sharing numbers are visible even if I am not hovering over the plugin.
Haider
Great Plugin Indeed!
I finally activated and modified it a little to suit my theme
I have a few queries:
1. Do you plan to include the new facebook share button along with the like button ? Please consider this.
2. Won’t it be better to handle styling with a separate CSS file rather than inline CSS ? A lot of premium themes have option for custom CSS which is added to the header; but that doesn’t work in this case. I had to modify the plugin file to change the styles.
Thank you so much for such an awesome product!
Jenn Marie
Hi there! From one high-quality person to another: I see you. This plugin rocks, and I suspect it’s due to the meticulousness I see on all your stuff!
One question: any idea why the bar is not sticky for me on iPhone (iOS7)? I’m using Point, a responsive theme. Have tried disabling other social plugins.
Mike
Lots of people like me having problems with your floating bar not working. Do you check your support comments? I guess only option is to assume that since you don’t address the reasons why your floating bar does not work, it must be broken and I must look for another solution. (Sad face)
WPBeginner Support
Mike, we tested it WP 3.8 and it works fine. As a free plugin it comes with limited support options. Unfortunately we can not address theme related issues.
Admin
Brian So
Hi, thanks for sharing this plugin. Whenever I click on ‘Like’ on the floating social bar, it pops up a window for me to share to my friends. But the window is cut off, making only the left side visible. It only happens to the Facebook Like button and not to G+. Do you know how to fix this?
Jenn Marie
Brian, try adding this to your style sheet or your theme’s custom CSS box:
/* to fix cropping of fb post-like popup*/
.fb-like iframe {
max-width: inherit !important;
}
I was having the same problem and this worked immediately!
Rahul Chowdary
I absolutely loved this plugin. I made few changes myself to make it better for my blog.
I am also using Sticky Header by ThematoSoup. So when the sticky header is scrolled down the floating social bar overlapping perfectly.
Problem is the background of the bar and fsb-sprite image.
So I edited the css of this plugin to remove background color of the bar and removed background of fsb-sprite image.
You can see that working on any post of my blog. My blog: Techpingo[dot]com.
My question: In the free version an image is used as buttons and the counters are placed properly. But how can I use customized version with actual buttons like yours in “wpbeginner.com” blog and sister blog “list25.com” .
Please tell me how to do it but don’t say me no.
Mike Campbell
Thanks for the great plugin, using it on a couple of my websites.
Nitin
Hi,
Just wanted to know if the bar could be disabled for mobile devices as social sharing is native on iOS etc. If yes, then how.
Apologies, if you have already addressed the question in conversations before, I gave cursory glance could not find anyone on this.
Thanks
Muhammad Shoaib
Hey i have installed it on my website and it is working great. I want to change the background color of the sharing bar so that it will match with my blog’s bg color. I have tried in CSS file but did not succeeded. can anyone help me how to do it.? Thanks
Jenn Marie
Muhammad, you might try making your own fsb-sprite.png file with a transparent background. This file is located in the theme’s images folder and currently the button images are on a white background. You’ll need an image editing program that supports a transparent canvas, like Adobe Fireworks.
Bob Digital
Hi, we are getting a redirect loop on the pinterest button, all others seem to work ok. Any ideas what we might be doing wrong?
WPBeginner Support
Its working fine on our test site. Please try disabling other social media plugins and see if this works. If it does work then please notify us about the plugin that was conflicting.
Admin
Bob Digital
Hi, thanks. Does the pinterest button on our site work for you? – http://digitalvillas.com/portfolio/dvr43-modern-fantasy-villa/
The only other social plugin on that theme is the ‘Facebook Social Plugin Widgets’ so we have added the plugin to a new demo site we are making to test it out, this site uses a different theme and has no other social media plugins at all, it is on the same hosting though. We get the same response from the pinterest button.
On this page you dont have pinterest so we cant test it, is there another site you have it on we can test please?
Many Thanks.
WPBeginner Support
We are using a customized version of floating social bar on our sister website, http://www.list25.com and Pinterest button is working fine there.
Emily
How to fix if it get “error” on Facebook button?
WPBeginner Support
What error do you get?
Admin
Jaswinder
Great information about how to add a floating social share bar in wordpress?
I was looking for the information and I got the answer.
Paul
Hi, I have a question about the facebook like. When you open this up, you get a share on facebook box, as expected. But if you have multiple facebook pages, how can you direct the share to a specific page, ie personal vs business page. This is a recurrent theme with facebook shares and likes. Any thoughts?
Thanks
Paul
aquib
Hi the facebook share button will only partially display can you help ?
Paul
I have a question. Let’s say you enable this new floating social bar, what happens to all those prior posts you have out in the world or in your blog, enabled with jetpack social sharing. Do those social buttons disappear from those posts?
WPBeginner Support
Floating social bar will show your likes and tweet counts on those posts. The plugin will not affect how people shared your posts before installing this plugin.
Admin
William Hughes
I would like to use the new plugin, BUT
is it alright to install it on a wordpress site that has been customized with different/unique graphics and “navigational icons” were added to the sub header??? *
(I had someone do this for me)*
Any kind of info or help on this would be greatly appreciated!
WPBeginner Support
Yes it is alright to install it on a customized site.
Admin
Fatos
Hi,
Thank you wpbeginner for creating such an awesome plugin. I installed it and realized it wasn’t floating, deactivated almost all plugins and found the culprits while activating them one by one. Two plugins that conflict with this one are: Facebook TrafficPop™ for WordPress, and Wordpress Like Locker; same author from codecanyon.net. Do you guys have any idea how to fix it.
FxB
Nice plugin
One observation : you should remove the white background on the sprite.png so we could tweak the background without having a disgracing white border around the elements.
For the rest nothing to say, great work
Iselag
Can i add the bar at the bottom of a page or post instead of the top where it is now?
Nouman Younas
Just installed it.. feeling great.
i installed it because of two reasons
its unique
you are reliable
Julian
Thank you for this beautiful plugin. I am having one issue: If I activate the plugin, when clicking at a post, I get an access denied message from my htaccess (I protected /wp-admin directory). If I do not enter any credentials and click cancel, the page and the plugin loads and everything looks normal. Does your plugin require access to /wp-admin folder?
Editorial Staff
It does call the ajax to update the count which is probably why you are getting that error.
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-password-protect-your-wordpress-admin-wp-admin-directory/ << This tutorial hs a fix that will allow admin-ajax file to be loaded without any issues.
Admin
Julian
Worked perfectly. Thanks so much for the quick response!
Dario
I didn´t like me,, because i need the option to send by mail,, and this plug-in didn’t had it!
Christos
Hello , great work with this plugin and in general
I have a question .
Is there a way to add my post rating php code in the bar , so it will float with the social buttons too .
It will be a nice future
Editorial Staff
Not yet, but there will be in the future via a hook.
Admin
Feyi C
Perfect timing! I just deleted a social sharing plugin that was giving me serious crawling and indexing issues. Thank you so much. The best things in life really are free. I’m happy to make a donation and will be looking into your other paid products and services in future…you rock!
Editorial Staff
Thanks for using our plugin.
Admin
Muhammadibn
Is it possible to add functionality for the facebook share button?
Editorial Staff
Turn off the socialite, and the FB like button will work like the share.
Admin
Greg Moore
Hi,
The instructions on this page say:
” Next, add your twitter ID in the field in the following format @wpbeginner.”
The instructions on the Settings page for the plugin say:
“Your twitter username when visitors retweet your posts (no @ symbol).”
Thanks in advance for clarifying this.
– Greg
Editorial Staff
Sorry, that is our mistake. Fixed the instruction. Add twitter handle without the @ symbol.
Admin
Marcy Diaz
Thank you for this plugin. I always appreciated that your social bar didn’t cover the post text while I was reading on an iPad, while many other plugins do. I also appreciate all your many tutorials; when I need to know how to do something with WordPress, your site is usually the first site I search, even before a general Google search.
Editorial Staff
Thank you Marcy for your continuous support. We truly appreciate it.
-Syed
Admin
Noel O'Connor
Thank you guys so much for this, I LOVE it. I was sick to the back teeth of “Sociable”.
MJ Bush
Are there any plans to create an option to disable the number of shares display? For now I’m not activating it because of the big fat zeros. Will activate when there’s an option or I have decent numbers.
Editorial Staff
Yes, in our next update which should hopefully go live later today, it will automatically hide the count if it is 0. If the count is higher then 0, then it will display.
Admin
Ray Mitchell
This plugin is exactly what I need for my newly launched blog. Unfortunately, the row of 0 shares is depressing. Is there any thought to making the counters an option?
Katie
Is there a way to customize it so it looks just like the way you have it on here? I installed it, but the font is different, it’s more spaced out between the buttons, and there isn’t the line dividers
Editorial Staff
The customization on this site are done to match our design. We use a font called Oswald which has to be loaded first in the design before it can be used by the bar. It doesn’t make sense to load an external font that doesn’t match site design for thousands of users who use this plugin.
In short, if you would like to do that, then you can override the plugin CSS styles.
Admin
Seda
Thanks guys. This is an amazing plugin. Can you let us know how to add the line dividers like the one on your page here and change the font in css? I’m a newbie and don’t know css but i’m willing to give it a shot. What line in css should be changed to add the line dividers and change the fonts?
Thanks in advance and thanks for the best social media plugin out there.
Sri Ganesh.M
Thanks for the plugin, but the value of every post is 0. !
Nick
Is there somewhere to see example of what it looks like and how it works?
I’ve tried all the rest and none worked to our satisfaction. Would love to see if this is the one for us.
Editorial Staff
See a demo of it right on this site.
Admin