Social Plugins That Load Quickly

7 replies
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Okay, quick question I'm running a wordpress blog and had installed the addthis follow plugin. The problem is that it seems to slow down the load time on all the pages. So then I tried adding the follow buttons manually from each site but the styling is not consistent that way. Does anybody know of a follow me plugin that looks good and doesn't slow down site speed very much?
#load #plugins #quickly #social
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    • Profile picture of the author gottfrid
      In my experience most social plugins load slowly.

      I add them manually, which is pretty easy and even then they load slow, especially if you aren't using a CDN and your website has a decent amount of content.

      If you are loading elements like you should, javascripts get loaded pretty much last. So when a user visits your site, all the html, css, content (images, etc..) load, then all the scripts. Depending on how many scripts and how much content you have, this can take what seems like a relatively long amount of time. One way to speed everything up is to use a CDN.
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      • Profile picture of the author UnkwnUsr
        Originally Posted by gottfrid View Post

        In my experience most social plugins load slowly.

        I add them manually, which is pretty easy and even then they load slow, especially if you aren't using a CDN and your website has a decent amount of content.

        If you are loading elements like you should, javascripts get loaded pretty much last. So when a user visits your site, all the html, css, content (images, etc..) load, then all the scripts. Depending on how many scripts and how much content you have, this can take what seems like a relatively long amount of time. One way to speed everything up is to use a CDN.
        Yeah, they all seem pretty slow. I guess I could just put up links to my social media pages but I really want people to be able to follow with one click.

        Which CDN do you recommend, CloudFlare? I've also heard that caching can help but that messes up my AdRotate plugin.
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        • Profile picture of the author gottfrid
          Originally Posted by UnkwnUsr View Post

          Yeah, they all seem pretty slow. I guess I could just put up links to my social media pages but I really want people to be able to follow with one click.

          Which CDN do you recommend, CloudFlare? I've also heard that caching can help but that messes up my AdRotate plugin.
          I've never used cloudflare but amazon s3 is nice.

          In my experience, Facebook stuff loads way slower than other social media buttons. Twitter loads pretty quick and sometimes Facebook stuff will lag behind (I think due to facebook's own servers). It really doesn't seem to affect anything else on my site (scrolling or content). So I don't mind as much when it might take 3-5 seconds to load. People aren't visiting my page and immediately clicking any of the social buttons; they usually look at the content then decide whether or not to interact socially and by that time everything has been loaded for a while.

          I'd want to see what exactly is causing the lag. Is it the scripts? The plugin? Is my content not optimized. If the page and content and other script stuff loads fine and some specific social buttons just take an extra 10 seconds to load, it really shouldn't be an issue.
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          • Profile picture of the author UnkwnUsr
            Originally Posted by gottfrid View Post

            It really doesn't seem to affect anything else on my site (scrolling or content). So I don't mind as much when it might take 3-5 seconds to load. People aren't visiting my page and immediately clicking any of the social buttons; they usually look at the content then decide whether or not to interact socially and by that time everything has been loaded for a while.
            My main reason for trying to get the page speed lower is Google as they have stated that is does play a role in where you site ranks. Also, it seems like my Adsense ads are the last thing to load which probably isn't good for the CTR.
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    • Profile picture of the author UnkwnUsr
      Originally Posted by kiash001 View Post

      try diggdigg
      Isn't that more for sharing? I don't really need that as my theme already comes with sharing options, thanks though.
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  • Profile picture of the author RedWaterDub
    I am also looking for a new concept social sharing plugin that loads fast. The only way I know of to speed it up is to use asynchronous coding.

    There are new asynchronous coding adsense ads now too.

    There is a new plugin out that looks cool but I bet it's slow. What do you think? Covert Social Buzz.

    Anybody know of any more? that load quickly as well?
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