If you have a look down the very bottom of this site, you’ll see a bright red bar that travels up and down with the page, and has some buttons.

It’s a toolbar being provided by Wibiya as part of their Beta program. It’s an interesting concept that I’ve seen on a few different sites lately and have been asked about by a few clients as well. I’m testing it here, and on another client site that I can’t mention.

Some of the features include Twitter and Facebook integration, site search, photo gallery, and live notifications which allows the owner to post something that is announced to visitors when they visit. All features can be activated or deactivated at your whim. The Wibiya.com site also assists with installation instructions on a variety of platforms, including Blogger, WordPress and TypePad as well as providing an HTML version allowing it to be installed on virtually any site.

Setting it up was simple, and management of it’s features is done entirely through the Wibiya site. They over close to 30 different color combinations allowing you to match your theme, or contrast with it to help it stand out. The toolbar also tracks visits giving you some basic stats, although the potential is obviously there to track a lot more details.

When I first installed it, the toolbar only appeared on single posts, but not the homepage. This is something that has been reported on their site a few times and no resolution has been posted, but it did begin to work spontaneously for me. Since the majority of the work is done from their servers, updates and fixes are instant.

The downside of course is that you’re relying on a third-party service for this.

As I run the test, somewhat longer than a day, I’ll let you know how it goes.