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The SimpleReach Slide is a WordPress Plugin that recommends related articles from within your site. But instead of adding those recommended links to the bottom of the article, it creates a “slide” effect at the bottom of the page. You might have seen a similar related slider on NYTimes.com website. 
First Impressions of The SimpleReach Slide
Whenever I see a site running the slide plugin, I find it to be a great looking slide that can be helpful and it can keep you on the site longer if it pulls a related article in the slide and not some random slide that has nothing to do with the current slide.
But what I really like about the slide is the Facebook like and Twitter buttons attached to the slide. Not only does the slide give you another article to look at but it shows you how many times its been shared on Twitter and Facebook. 
Easy Installation of The SimpleReach Slide
The installation is pretty simple. Go to the WordPress Plugin Directory through your admin panel and install the plugin. Once installed, you will need to go to SimpleReach and sign up for an account. Once you have an account, you can inter your login info in the settings areas of the plugin.
As part of the configuration process you can change the color the links and change the header text if you want.
After you are logged into SimpleReach, your slide will be active and start pulling related articles.
Final Thoughts
I have had the SimpleReach Slide installed on several of my sites for almost a week and I have to say I like the plugin but it could be better.
What I like:
- I like the look the of slide
- Social sharing buttons are a great idea
- Easy installation is a good thing
- The sliding effect catches the eye, once you get to the bottom of the page
- You can hide the slide if its in the way.
- SlimpleReach Website – Tracks your articles and how many times they have shared.
- Disable article from showing up on slide.
What I Do Not Like:
- The slide doesn’t seem to pull related articles, it seems to pull whatever “random” article it wants.
- There are not any options to set what articles are shown. (Featured articles)
Overall I like the plugin and will continue to use the plugin for now. For a basic slider, its great but until they fix the coding and it pulls related articles and not random articles, I won’t be fully happy with this plugin. I can live without features, if it pulls related articles when there are related articles to feature.
If you need a great looking slider to help keep visitors on your site, Simple Reach Slide is a great plugin for doing that.
Image Source: All images/Screen Shots are from SimpleReach
Are you using SimpleReach Slide? If so, let us know what you think. Is the slide showing random slides or is it pulling actual related articles?
About James
I’ve signed up “for early access” but nothing happened! It seems that it’s not working if you are not a member of…don’t know what or why you need to register to use something like that when there are lots of other similar plugins out there that work out of the box?
I agree about the sign up area. However, by signing up you get access to your social stats and after playing with the stats and live features is gives a lot of useful information. If yo have a busy site and depend on social media campaigns, then this is a great tool. But there other tools to gather this info as well.
As for signing up, when I signed up, all I received was an email a few hours later. But if you take that information you used to create an account and use it to sign into the plugin it works right away. It then takes a few hours to start seeing your stats.