Every WordPress site owner has been there — a plugin that works perfectly but doesn’t look quite right. The fonts, the spacing, the colors — something just doesn’t fit. And while many premium plugins offer solid customization panels, there’s always a gap between what the settings allow and what your design actually needs. Bridging that gap usually means hiring a developer. But it doesn’t have to.
In this tutorial we’re going to show you exactly how to take a premium WordPress plugin’s frontend design further than its built-in options allow — completely free, and without writing a single line of code in a theme file.
The Two Plugins We’re Using
Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress is a premium social sharing plugin and one of the most feature-complete solutions of its kind. It ships with dozens of display methods, a wide library of button styles, advanced positioning options, share counters, click-to-share popups, subscriber forms, and an extensive customization panel. It’s a professional-grade tool built for sites that take social sharing seriously.
Simple Custom Code is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add custom CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to your site cleanly and safely — no theme file editing, no risk of breaking anything on an update, and no coding experience required. It works alongside any WordPress plugin or theme, giving any user the ability to apply precise design customizations that go beyond what settings panels offer.
In this tutorial, Easy Social Share Buttons is our practical example — but every technique shown here applies equally to any WordPress plugin you’re working with.
Customizing the Share Buttons Container
The share buttons container is the wrapper that holds your entire social sharing block. Controlling how it sits within your layout — its width, alignment, padding, background, and spacing — is often the first thing you’ll want to fine-tune. Easy Social Share Buttons gives you a strong starting point through its settings, but for precise adjustments that match your exact layout and brand, custom CSS is the cleanest solution.
Using Simple Custom Code, you can target the container element directly and apply your changes in a way that persists through every plugin and theme update — without touching a single core file.
- Identifying and targeting the share buttons container with the right CSS selector
- Adjusting width, padding, margins, and alignment to fit your layout
- Applying background colors, borders, and shadows to the wrapper
- Adding your CSS through Simple Custom Code so changes are safe and persistent
Styling the Individual Share Buttons
With the container in place, the next step is styling the buttons themselves. This is where your brand identity comes through — button size, shape, colors, hover effects, and transitions all contribute to whether your share buttons feel like a designed part of your site or an afterthought. Simple Custom Code lets you go as deep as you need to here, targeting specific button elements with custom CSS and achieving results that no settings panel can replicate.
- Targeting individual share button elements with precise CSS selectors
- Customizing colors, size, shape, and icon spacing
- Adding hover effects and smooth CSS transitions
- Achieving a fully on-brand design that looks and feels intentional
Why Simple Custom Code Is the Right Tool for This
What makes Simple Custom Code the ideal solution for this kind of work isn’t just that it’s free — it’s that it’s built the right way. Your customizations are stored completely independently from your theme and any plugins you’re styling. Update Easy Social Share Buttons, switch themes, or change anything else on your site — your CSS stays exactly where you left it, doing exactly what you built it to do.
It also integrates with the Visual CSS Customizer, a free point-and-click interface that lets you select any element on your site and edit its styles visually in real time — without writing CSS manually at all. For users who want design control without any technical learning curve, this combination is hard to beat.
The approach demonstrated in this tutorial works for any premium or free WordPress plugin. Wherever a settings panel falls short, Simple Custom Code picks up — giving every WordPress user, at any skill level, the ability to build the exact design they’re after without spending a penny on development.
Learn More & Get Started
👉 Learn more about Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress at socialsharingplugin.com
👉 Learn more about Simple Custom Code at simplecustomcode.com
👉 Download Simple Custom Code free from WordPress.org and start customizing your site today — no developer required.
Have a plugin you’re trying to style beyond its built-in options? Drop a comment below — we’d love to help you get there.