Floating Social Media Links had humble beginnings as my first WordPress plugin. I originally got the idea for the plugin when working on maintenance for http://oregonyouthline.org/. We needed a better solution for our social media links and actions (ie, Facebook like) than a column of super outdated icons (including a MySpace one) on the homepage (the old icons ended up staying in addition to the new ones). Having worked with WordPress for almost a year, and written a couple of (horrifically-coded) themes, I made a quick hardcoded plugin that added a floating frame with the links and Facebook like button.
A few months later, I decided to publish a version of the plugin for a computer science project. I released Floating Social Media Links 1.0 after ten iterations of development. The plugin was well received. With a combination of support requests and personal ideas for new features and enhancements, I released 13 updates (through version 1.4.1) over the next three months.
Beginning in October 2012, I began releasing less frequent updates; one every month or two. The plugin remained very popular, far more so than the other plugins that I had since released. As I focused more time on other projects I became less familiar with the FSML codebase, and it became worse and worse plugin in my view. I had long-term plans for the plugin, but the things I’d tried simply weren’t working and I didn’t see much of a future for the plugin, despite its popularity. My goals of creating an amazing user experience for plugin administration felt off, as I realized that I had taken completely the wrong approach to achieving simplicity and ease of use.
In March 2013, I got an idea for a new plugin. I sense that Floating Social Media links was (and still is) so popular because it’s social media-related. My new idea filled a void in the social-media-plugin-space because it offered lightweight, no-js content sharing. I spent a lot of time building QuickShare into the best plugin I could create, covering everything from clean code to amazing admin interface to powerful, flexible design options for the frontend. It really became everything that I wanted for Floating Social Media Links, but hand’t had the experience to build.
Once I released QuickShare in July, I began thinking about Floating Social Media Links more. I asked the question: how do I make FSML more like QuickShare?
I went through several ideas. A complete audit of FSML’s options, and removing as many options as possible. Abandoning the plugin entirely (Browser Rejector is a lot closer on that front). Renaming the plugin and abstracting the social media links concept so that links could be used in several places throughout a theme, not just in a floating frame. Deprecating FSML and encouraging users to migrate to a new replacement plugin, so that I could forego backwards-compatibility.
In the end, I decided to rethink Floating Social Media Links within its existing scope. I’m not quite going to start from scratch, but I’ve already started tearing heaps of not-very-useful options, and code, from the plugin. Things like colorschemes (useless with frame themes), custom borders and shadows (why?), the ability to show or hide the frame on the frontend, and all of the associated options, optional IE7 support, etc. Once I can clean everything up and consolidate the options, I’ll look at adding new features that are actually useful. A Genericons display option is near the top of my list, as is the ability to vertically center the position of the frame without custom css.
I also want to fix the long-broken method of storing link information in hardcoded fields that limit the number of custom links and make adding additional default social networks a bad idea. I’m thinking a private, no-ui custom post type is the best solution, but I need to explore the options more. This is the one thing that holds Floating Social Media Links back the most, and the thing that’s bothered me since before I released version 1.0 (you’ll notice that the links screen hasn’t substantially changed since then).
Unlike in the past, I’m not going to set any timeline for this update. It’ll be ready when it’s ready, and I want to try to do everything in one huge update (to minimize disruption for existing users, since the back-compat will be messy and there will be a bit of an update process). I do know that I’m going to call it version 2.0, and I intend to test it very thoroughly. I would love beta testers, contact me if you’re interested and I’l put you on my list.
You can track the action on the WordPress.org plugins trac. Let me know if you have any ideas!
Update – March 2018: I eventually decided to “abandon” the plugin as-is; however, it will remain publicly-accessible on WordPress.org but without future updates (the last published update was in 2013). There are still thousands of sites using this plugin, and it can work quite well despite the poor decisions in the interface design.