Review: Monarch Social Sharing Plugin

Monarch, created by Elegant Themes, is one of the most powerful and feature rich social sharing plugins available for WordPress. It has a full range of features that allow it to fit into almost any website design and is so incredibly simple to set-up that using it is almost a no-brainer. It’s not perfect, but I still recommend it for almost every website I build.

Networks

Monarch supports over 20 of the top social networks. Setting up networks is super easy, just click to add a new network, drag to arrange them in the order you desire and you’re ready to go.

Locations

Monarch gives you the ability to position your social sharing buttons in five different locations on a web page. You can choose from Floating Sidebar, Above & Below Content, On Images & Video, Automatic Pop-Up or Automatic Fly-In.

Even better, you can choose which positions to utilize on a page by page basis using the Monarch Settings Override feature that is added to options of every page and post.

Triggers

You also have a ton of ways to control Pop-Ups and Fly-ins. The old standards are Timed Delay and Bottom of Post which are pretty self-explanatory. But you can also set the share buttons to appear after a user scrolls a certain percentage down a page or after a set time of inactivity. For even more interactivity, you can set the buttons to appear after someone leaves a comment or makes a purchase on your website.

Hover Effects

Monarch includes 5 really cool hover effects and each animation acts a little differently based on the icon shape you chose. You can customize each location where Monarch is used too, so your sidebar and pop-ups can have a different hover effect.

Customizable Design

There are lots of different ways to display your social sharing buttons, including the shape, custom colours, orientation and the ability to include the number of share or follow counts. There’s even a All Networks button so users can share your content on all social media accounts at the same time. There’s no way to use custom icons though so you’re limited to the 20 or so networks that Monarch includes with the plugin.

Social Following

Monarch also includes the ability to create a listing of all your social networks, even displaying your follower counts if desired. All you need to do is insert the URL for your profiles and Monarch handles the rest. These can be inserted in a widget area or right into a post.

Mobile Features

Monarch is completely responsive and retina ready so they look great on any mobile device. You also have the option to shut off certain positions of buttons on mobile devices if you want. This is especially useful for the Floating Sidebar position which isn’t an effective way to display the icons on a mobile device.

In Use

I use Monarch on all of the websites I build because I seriously love how it works and looks. That being said, there are a few issues that cause me a little frustration. The biggest one is the size of the buttons. I have found no way to insert a small set of buttons into a post, all buttons automatically take up the full width of the space they are inserted into. This is normally not a huge issue, but when you are after a minimal design, the Inline positioning feature is often not a good solution. In these cases I typically use one of the other positioning options, such as the floating sidebar, which is nestled nice and unobtrusively on the edge of the page.

You can choose the round button option which is much more minimal in nature. But if the round design doesn’t fit into your website aesthetic you don’t have a lot of options. One of my clients went with another plugin for this very reason.

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