Social Warfare 3.0 is Imminent

Update 05.01.2018 – Thank you to those of you who have been helping us test our pending update. We have decided to push the release date back a week in order to continue testing. Stay tuned!

It’s been a little over three months since the last update to Social Warfare – Pro. And there’s a number of reasons for that.

For one, we launched our Affiliate WP add-on and that was a big deal for us.

We wanted to ensure that the first ever add-on for Social Warfare was released and had time for us to sort out any potential conflicts or challenges.

It was an intentionally small niche add-on so that we could learn potential add-on release challenges before rolling out more widely demanded ones.

Secondly, we’ve been preparing a huge update.

It’s potentially the biggest update we’ve done yet to both Social Warfare and its Pro counterpart.

And it’s happening next week.

In this post, I want to give you a small preview of what we’ve been working on to lead up to version 3.0 being released next week.

Style Options Upgrades

Over the years our users have loved the nearly unlimited amount of styling combinations for Social Warfare. But there was always room for more.

So in version 3.0, we are baking in a new “circles” style for the side-floating buttons, and will eventually bring this into the horizontal share buttons as well.

Additionally, we’ll be introducing a new option for the Click-to-Tweet styling that will give you a place to input your own custom CSS.

We’ll also be adding an additional style option to our Popular Posts widget that will allow you to put custom dimensions in for your thumbnail images.

Floating Share Buttons Upgrades

Since day one, people have loved our floating share button options. They have always been a bit limited though, and we felt it was time to increase their flexibility.

Firstly, we’re adding some resizing options to give you better control over how big/small the side-floating buttons are.

Secondly, we’re introducing the ability to choose the vertical alignment of those side-floating share buttons. You will be able to have them float at the Top, Middle, or Bottom of the screen.

Oh, and for all of you who have been pushing for a right-floating share buttons option… your wish is coming true.

Finally, we’re introducing an option for mobile that will allow you to have a top-floating option for mobile devices.

Pin Data for All the Images

Social Warfare – Pro 3.0 will give you the ability to add a Pinterest description to all images contained in your posts instead of only having it for your single custom Pinterest image.

This is useful for when people use the Image Pin Hover button or a browser extension to Pin images in your posts.

Open Graph Output Options

We’ve had a handful of requests in the past to make it easy to disable the Open Graph output for Social Warfare – Pro.

Some people have extensively invested in other Open Graph customization or plugins, and while they love the other features Social Warfare – Pro has to offer, they don’t need it for Open Graph. So, version 3.0 will include an option to disable Open Graph output.

Additionally, we are also including the ability to toggle the OG:type output on or off.

Accessibility Improvement

We’re working very hard to make Social Warfare as accessibility-friendly as we can. One small step towards that will be with our share button selectors.

Currently, due to the drag/drop interface, these do not work well with screen readers.

Version 3.0 will fix that.

Major Refactoring of Core Code

More than anything else, this update will deliver many enhancements to the core code base.

Our developers are refactoring nearly every aspect of the plugin to make it even faster, more efficient, and more developer-friendly than ever.

Not a single metaphorical stone is going unturned.

Social Warfare 3.0 is going to be the leanest, meanest, fastest version we’ve ever released.

And that’s only the beginning as the refactoring also allows us to create more enhancements and add-ons faster than ever.

In fact, we’re currently planning on rolling out a new version of the plugin on the first Monday of every month following this launch.

So, on the first Monday in June, you can expect to see version 3.1 with a whole suite of new Pinterest features and enhancements, Google Tag Manager support, and so much more!

So, Stay Tuned

We have planned the 3.0 release for Tuesday of next week (May 1, 2018). So keep an eye on your WordPress updates.

And if you’re interested in lending a hand, we could really use your help beta testing this new version before it’s publicly released. With so much new code being introduced, we want to test it out in as many environments as possible.

If you want to help us beta test it, please fill out the form below:

We’re really excited about this update, and hope you are too.

If there are any features/updates not mentioned that you’d like to see, feel free to leave a comment below!