How to Set Up The Free Social Warfare Plugin

Last updated on April 9th, 2019 at 05:15 pm

Let’s take an inside look at the free Social Warfare Plugin. Why?

I know choosing the right social plugin can be challenging. There’s so many available on the market, it can make your head spin.

Should you spend money on a social sharing plugin? The truth is that it’s totally up to you. I have personally been using the pro version since I started this blog.

If you are serious about turning your blog into a profitable venture, you should buy the pro version, but I totally understand if you want to test out the free version.

Before I take you inside the dashboard of the free Social Warfare plugin, I want to tell you a little bit about why I chose to start using it. You can download the free plugin here.

Related posts on the Social Warfare Plugin:

• Is Social Warfare the Right Plugin for You?
• My Social Warfare Plugin Experience
• How I Customized the Click to Tweet on Social Warfare
• I Share My Pinterest Image Creation System for Social Warfare

 

Why I Chose It

When I first started this blog, I was using the Monarch plugin. However, I started having some issues.

My blog wasn’t working properly and instead of spending hours trying to figure out why the blog wasn’t working, I invested in the Social Warfare plugin.

At the time, they didn’t have a free version, so I forked out $29 to get access to it.

I’m glad I did as it’s definitely been responsible for some of my posts getting shared hundreds of times.

The great thing is that you don’t have to fork over any money if you don’t want to.

They now have a free version and I am going to walk you through on how to set it up for maximum results.

Video WalkThrough Of How to Setup The Free Social Warfare Plugin

I know that some of you would prefer to just learn via video. I’ve created a video walkthrough so you can watch over my shoulder to see how to best set up the free plugin.

Of course, if you’d rather learn by screenshots and written tutorials, I’ve got you covered below.

 

Let’s Setup the Free Social Warfare Plugin

I’ve decided to walk you through the process of setting up the free Social Warfare plugin because I know that some people won’t want to spend money on their blog.

Plus, I know that once you realize how awesome this plugin is, you might decide to upgrade. When you do, here’s my affiliate link.

Installing the Plugin

The easiest way to install the free plugin is to do a search for it inside the WordPress dashboards.

Go to plugins >> add new

Then do a search for it by typing Social Warfare into the search box.

Activate the Plugin

Once you’ve installed the plugin from the repository, it’s time to activate it so we can set it up for maximum settings.

Remember, if you’d rather watch over my shoulder don’t forget the video above.

Let’s Run Through the Settings

Once the plugin is installed on your blog, you’ll see the Social Warfare tab on the left side of your dashboard.

Click on it and you’ll be taken to the settings screen.

Display Options on Plugin

I’ll run you through all the options you get on the display screen.

Social Networks

Right out of the gate, you’ll notice that with the free plugin you only get access to 6 social icons.

This can sound like a bad thing, but the truth is that I don’t really use all the available icons on the premium version.

Here’s a list of the social networks you get with the free plugin.

1. Google Plus
2. Twitter
3. Facebook
4. LinkedIn
5. Pinterest
6. StumbleUpon

To make them active, just drag the icon up into the active section.

Share Counts

The default settings are set to On. You can turn them off if you don’t want the number of shares to be displayed on our buttons.

However, we’ve all heard that social proof can help sell your products, services or get more people interested in whatever you have to offer.

Position Share Buttons

This option allows you to customize how you want your social icons to be positions on your pages, posts, homepage and your archive and categories.

Styles Tab in Social Warfare

We’ve completed setting up the display options, now we need to set up the styles inside of the free plugin.

Total Counts

This option allows you to customize how you want the “total shares” to appear on your blog.

You can set the following:

• Decimal places
• Decimal separator
• Alignment

On my blog, I believe that I left these all as default.

Floating Share Buttons

Turn this feature on to activate the floating share buttons on your blog. You can decide if you want your buttons to float:

• On the top of the page
• Bottom of the page
• On the left side of the page

It’s pretty self-explanatory and you can activate each one to see how it looks like on your blog.

Oh, and you’ll be able to change the background color as well. I’ve left mine to the default white which is the hex color #FFFFFF.

Social Identity Set Up

We’ve got 2 more tabs to complete the set up of the free Social Warfare plugin. Then you can start sharing your plugin to get some blog love.

Sitewide Identity

Here’s where you’ll enter your social media identity links. You’ll want to enter your:

• Twitter Username
• Pinterest Username
• Facebook Page URL
• Facebook App ID

If you’ve never set up a Facebook App Id, here’s a great tutorial that will show you how to do that.

Advanced Tab

This is the last tab in the settings. This page will be pretty quick to complete as I am going to tell you how I set mine up.

Frame Buster

This prevents people from framing your content. You can read more about the Sniply Buster here.

By default, it is off, just turn it on.

Caching Method

When I first started using the plugin, I had my Cache Rebuild Method set to Advanced Cache Trigger.

However, I recently had issues with my social share counts not showing and when I reached out to support they told me to switch from the Advanced Cache Trigger to Legacy Cache Rebuilding during Page Loads.

Since switching, I haven’t had any more issues with my social counts not showing up.

Full Content vs. Excerpts

By default, I left this as is. If your blog is using full content instead of excerpts, you may want to learn more about what this feature does.

I suggest clicking it on to see what it does. Here’s a great tutorial that will explain how this works.

Force New Shares

You can choose to force the new counts if the API count request is different. To tell you the truth, not really sure what this means?

I’ve left this as default on my blog. You can choose to turn it on if you choose.

The Plugin Is Set Up

There you have it, the free Social Warfare plugin is now set up and you have all the settings set up.

The great thing is that you can change and set them up the way that you want. You can even customize the social icons to match your blog.

What to Do Next

Now that you’ve chosen your social sharing plugin, the next thing is to start promoting your content.

If you’ve written some great content now it’s time to get others to share it. The best way to do that is to start sharing your content in Facebook Groups, Twitter and on Pinterest.

Don’t forget to share other people’s content.

What I’ve found is that the more I share other people’s content, my content gets shared in return.

Questions Regarding the Free Version

Q. How does the free version differ from the paid version?

A. I plan on creating a new blog post that covers the differences in the free version vs the paid version.

In the meantime, you can watch this video that I created that goes over the differences here.

Q. How long can I use the free version?

A. If you decide you want to use the free version, you can use it as long as you want. Don’t feel like you need to upgrade and pay for the paid version.

Q. Will I Get Support With the Free Version?

A. The free version is supported by the developers. They maintain it and update it on a regular basis.

However, this doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same type of support from the developers that a paying customer gets. It just isn’t reasonable to think that.

If you have questions regarding the free version or want to know how to do something, I recommend searching their knowledge base.

Final Take Away

As a blogger, you get the option to choose any type of social sharing plugin you want.

The important thing to consider when choosing one is to find one that makes it easy for others to share your content.

My blog wouldn’t be growing as quickly as it is if it wasn’t for this plugin. This plugin is responsible for my posts getting shared as often as they do.

Thank You

I’d like to say thank you for sharing my posts. My blog wouldn’t be able to grow the way that it’s been growing with you taking the time to help me spread the word.

So thanks for sharing my content, I truly appreciate it.

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Are you using social media to help you grow your blog? If so let me know which social media channel is sending you the most traffic.