Today, it is common practice to add social buttons on webpages for better user engagement and to make it easier for your posts to be shared. However, these buttons could slow down your website load performance severely.

For instance, with the Facebook Like button, the script to fetch the “like” numbers for your page and also to append the button HTML markup are the culprits. The impact could be very significant if you add the like button to every post.

In this post, we are going to discuss several solutions to optimize social buttons, which also improves your page load performance. We have been trying some available tools and scripts out there and here are our top 5 of the list., with their pros and cons attached. Let’s check them out.

Recommended Reading: A New Job Description For Designers: Improving Site Speed

1. Socialite

Socialite is a JavaScript library, developed by David Bushell. It allows us to load the actual social buttons upon a particular event like hovering or scrolling, making your page load more efficiently.

Pros

• Available as WordPress plugin.
• No need jQuery or other libraries.
• Load the actual social buttons upon any event: hover, scroll, click, etc.
• Customizable through CSS.
• Support for many social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest, Spotify, and Github. Extensible for other social networks.

Cons

• No supports for querying share or like numbers.

2. Sharrre

Sharrre is a jQuery plugin for adding social buttons on webpage. It comes with a set of API to make the button highly customizable.

Pros

• Support lots of social network buttons, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.
• Fully customizable button with CSS and the plugin options.
• Ablity to fetching share numbers and also sum them up.
• Tracking with Google Analytics.
• Available as WordPress plugin.

Cons

• Dependent on jQuery to work.
• Also rely on additional PHP script (for querying Google+ share number).

3. TNW Social Count

TNW Social Count is a WordPress plugin originally developed for The Next Web to fetch share numbers of articles, and display the result as shown in the following screenshot. Thankfully, the developer is generous enough to release the plugin for free, although not all features were included.

Pros

• WordPress Plugin, very easy to use with the provided GUI and template tag.
• Support for four major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (may not suffice).
• Fully customizable with CSS.
• Option to fetch count number automatically, or by demand.

Cons

• Works only for WordPress; need a workaround to have it work on Joomla or Drupal.
• It creates extra fields in the database. So, if your hosting plan has limited resource for the database, this could cause a trouble.
• At the time of the writing, support is limited to only four social networks mentioned above.

4. Filament Social Count

Social Count is a jQuery plugin developed by Filament Group for displaying the sharing button from Facebook, Twitter and Google+. This plugin shows the buttons efficiently by loading the button individually and only upon user deman; in return, webpages load faster.

Pros

• Load the button individually on hover.
• Very small file size, only 2.98KB.
• Support for touch device.

Cons

• Only support for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ sharing button.
• Rely on jQuery. So, despite of the very small size, you need to load an extra 93kb from jQuery.

5. Social Likes

Social Likes is a jQuery plugin to show social buttons with the share numbers. It comes with styles that are similar to the actual ones, as shown in the screenshot below.

Pros

• Default button styles which look close to the originals.
• Customizable look through CSS and through GUI.
• Support for Pinterest and LiveJournal.
• Easily extensible to add additional social networks.

Cons

• Similar to Sharrre, It relies on jQuery and also PHP for querying Goolge+ counter.
• It queries the counter number on page load.

The automobile industry has come far from its car magazine and TV advertisements. Nowadays many of today’s luxury car manufacturers have visual-laden and impressive automotive websites designed to make you sign on the dotted line in a heartbeat for your next car.

Whether you are at the site to check out the safety features, fuel consumption, engine specs and new functions of the latest model, or just to marvel at the exterior and interior of the car model of your choice, the websites are designed to make you stay and look around.

Recommended Reading: Supercar Wallpapers

In this post we are going to take a look at 20 professional automotive website designs that are built for the car lover in you. Who knows, you could find an idea or two from the methods used in these sites, when it comes to featuring your own products.

1. McLaren automotive

2. Beetle official

3. Subaru BRZ by Fabio Minerva

4. Pagani by Adam Spilker

5. Toyota official

6. Rolls Royce official

7. BMW International by The Clokkworker

8. Chevrolet official

9. Lamborghini official

10. CarID

11. Lexus GS450 official

12. Volvo cross country travels

13. Ford official

14. Estupolo.com by Anibal Estrella

15. Bentley official

16. MINI Countryman by Carlos Mario Pinilla

17. Jaguar by Johan Smeyers

18. Citroen DS5 by Sébastien Durand

19. Bentley Downers Grove

20. Renault Latitude Virtual Test Drive

People who deal with tons of emails on a daily basis would understand how important it is for (encrypted) emails to reach the correct recipient and have them read it. For business email clients, there are ‘read receipts‘ where you will know if the receiver has opened the email you sent them.

Read receipts have not been implemented natively on Gmail, but here’s a Chrome extension that you can use just for that.

Signals is an extension that allows you to track who has read your sent email on Gmail. It also has a very clean interface. Let’s see how Signals can work for you.

Recommended Reading: 10 Ways To Tighten Up Your Gmail Security

Get Notified On Who Has Read Your Mail

To begin, download and install the Signals Chrome extension. A Signals icon button will be shown at the end of the browser’s address bar — this is where all your notifications will be shown.

Now, head to app.getsignals.com/install/google to connect your Gmail account. Sign in and you’re ready to start getting notifications.

To begin tracking, go to Gmail and compose a new email. You’ll notice a new Signals button at the bottom of the compose box that allows you to track the email. Check that box and click on Send to track your email.

Once a user opens the email, a notification will appear on the Signals icon. You can then click on it to view details like when did the user open it, the location it was opened from and how many times it has been viewed. You can also click on a particular notification to view the entire email on Gmail.

That’s all there is to it, Signals is very easy to set up and is free for up to 200 notifications a month. That’s plenty since you don’t have to track every single email you send out. However, if you’re working with a team and need to track lots of mail, there’s a premium version with no limitations for $10/month.

We’ve featured a similar service before called RightInbox, but Signals is better as it keeps your Inbox clean and instead gives you notifications of your opened mail. At the time of this writing, Signals only works with Google Chrome, but a Firefox Beta is in the works.