Social buttons that stay out of the way.
Social Media Feather puts sharing and follow icons on your posts without dragging half a framework along behind them. Build your shortcode on this page, paste it into WordPress, and that is the whole job.
Field notes
The heron came back to the reservoir
She was on the far bank at first light, exactly where the map said she would not be.
Share this
Set it up here. Paste it in there.
Everything below maps to a real attribute on the [feather_share] and [feather_follow] shortcodes, which the plugin adds to WordPress. Install it first, then change anything here and the snippet rewrites itself.
Install the plugin first — the shortcode does nothing without it.
[feather_share] is added to WordPress by Social Media Feather. On a
site that does not have the plugin active, it stays on the page as plain text.
With Social Media Feather installed and active, drop this wherever the buttons should appear:
Prefer to do it in a template? The same call, in PHP:
Or don't touch a thing
Turn on Automatic Display and the buttons attach themselves before or after every post, page, or custom post type you choose.
Or use the widget
Sharing and following each ship as a widget, so a sidebar or footer is a drag away. Shortcodes work in text widgets too.
Or skip a post
Set the custom field synved_social_exclude to yes on any post and the buttons sit that one out.
Three minutes, and no build step.
Install from the dashboard
Plugins → Add New → search Social Media Feather. Or grab the zip from WordPress.org and upload it.
Pick your networks
Settings → Social Media. Switch providers on, fill in your profile URLs for the follow buttons, choose a skin and a size.
Place them
Paste the shortcode you built above, drop in a widget, or let Automatic Display append them to every post for you.
Small on purpose. Flexible anyway.
The plugin has been trimmed for thirteen years. What is left is the part people actually use.
Light enough to forget
One small stylesheet, one small script, and flat icon images your browser caches once. Nothing is fetched per button, and nothing blocks your page from painting.
Sharing and following, kept apart
Two independent sets with their own networks, their own placement and their own shortcode. Share buttons on posts, profile links in the footer, no compromise between them.
Nine icon skins
Regular, Circle, Balloon, Flag, Wheel, Medal, Shed, Clear Slate and Dark Slate. Set one globally, or override it on a single shortcode when one corner of the site wants something else.
Retina icons, six sizes
16 through 96 pixels, with double-resolution artwork up to 64 so the marks stay crisp on high-density screens instead of going soft at the edges.
Shortcodes, widgets, template tags
[feather_share] in content, a widget in a sidebar, or synved_social_share_markup() straight in a theme file. Same buttons, three ways in.
Yours to relabel
Every provider takes a custom title and URL, buttons can align left, right or centre, and an Extra Styles box takes any CSS you want loaded last.
Let readers ask an AI about the page.
Six assistant buttons sit alongside the social ones. Instead of posting your link somewhere, they open a fresh chat that is already asking about what the reader is looking at.
All six are off by default. Switch one on under Settings → Social Media → Service Providers by setting its Service to Share.
What the reader hands over
“The heron came back to the reservoir”
https://your-site.com/heron▍
- ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Perplexity open a new chat with the prompt already filled in.
- Copilot and Gemini accept no prompt in a URL, so the button copies it to the clipboard and opens a blank chat to paste into.
- Nothing is sent anywhere until the reader clicks. The button is a link, not a tracker.
People mostly say the same thing.
Social Media Feather is aptly named. It's small, fast, and exactly what I was looking for.
Lean and clean · WordPress.orgWe have used this for 5 years and have had consistently good performance from the plug-in. The updates are not so frequent that they are in any way a nuisance.
Reliable & not too many updates · WordPress.orgVery useful plugin that enables social media icons to display in an unobtrusive way. Works quietly without getting in the way, and follows all the best web practices.
Very useful and customizable · WordPress.orgQuietly and reliably does its job. Adds polish, and user convenience.
Trouble-free from day of installation · WordPress.orgHas a lot of options and also doesn't slow our site down.
Thorough and light · WordPress.orgDoes what it says and doesn't cause issues. Thanks to the developers!
It's a great plugin · WordPress.orgEverything else you might be wondering.
Is Social Media Feather free?
Yes. The plugin is free on WordPress.org and licensed under GPLv2, and all nine icon skins are bundled with it.
Do I need to write any code?
No. Switch your providers on under Settings → Social Media, turn on Automatic Display, and the buttons attach themselves to your posts. Shortcodes, widgets and template tags are there if you would rather place them yourself.
Which networks can I add?
Sharing covers Facebook, X, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr and email. Following adds YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Flickr, Foursquare and RSS. Six AI assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity — can be switched on as well.
Will it slow my site down?
The buttons are ordinary links with flat icon images, so nothing is fetched per button and there is no widget to boot up. The plugin adds one small stylesheet and one small script, and the icons are cached after the first page.
Can I change how the icons look?
Nine skins ship with it — Regular, Circle, Balloon, Flag, Wheel, Medal, Shed, Clear Slate and Dark Slate — at six sizes from 16 to 96 pixels, with double-resolution artwork up to 64. Spacing, alignment and an Extra Styles box for your own CSS are all in the settings.
Can I choose the order the buttons appear in?
Yes. Drag them into place in the preview above and the shortcode's show attribute is rewritten to match. The plugin builds its button list by walking show in sequence, so they render in exactly that order.
How do I hide the buttons on one post?
Add the custom field synved_social_exclude with the value yes to that post, or synved_social_exclude_share and synved_social_exclude_follow to hide just one set. Custom Fields has to be enabled under Screen Options first.
What do the AI assistant buttons do?
They hand the reader a prompt asking about your page, along with its title and URL. ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Perplexity open a new chat with it already filled in; Copilot and Gemini accept no prompt in a URL, so the button copies it to the clipboard instead. All six are off by default.
Put the buttons up. Get on with the writing.
Free, GPL-licensed, and installed from your own dashboard in about a minute.
Social Media Feather has been on WordPress sites since 2012, and it is still the same idea: the smallest thing that puts a share button where you want it.