What would be faster - plugin, html or shortcode?

Personally I use a theme options page which echos out HTML if the admin fills out the information. It isn't the fastest but its great for management and simplicity.

Unfortunately, there's not a black-and-white answer here, because there's a variety of factors that come into play.

For example, server-side rendering of content is in many cases actually faster than rendering on the front-end, but that's largely dependent on the speed of your server. If you're on cheap, sharing hosting (like many of us are), server-side can be slower.

There are 7 things I recommend everyone do to improve site performance:

1. Concatenate. Combining like files together.
2. Minify. Removing the spacing, line breaks and comments from files.
3. Smush. Removing unneeded data from image files.
4. Icon Fonts. Icon fonts are a lighter, faster alternative to image-based icons.
5. Compress. Reduce file size by up to 70 percent.
6. Cache. Telling browsers to keep static assets stored locally so that they doesn’t have to be re-downloaded every time they visit your site.
7. Page Structure. Adjusting the location of CSS and JavaScript files for faster rendering.

If you'd like to learn more about any of these, I've written a pretty detailed article on faster WordPress sites. I've personally used these tips to create multiple sites that load in less than 2 seconds on cheap, shared hosting.

http://gomakethings.com/high-performance-websites/

1- Html & PHP : for social media you put them in other file like social-Blox.php then call it by

    <?php include(locate_template( 'templates/social-Blox.php' ));?>

now you have the social in separated file you can use it in many places and it still very light no plugin load or any thing

after this inside the social-Blox.phpyou dont add only html NO . the parts that will be changed later you can use ACF or theme options ...to make them dynamic for example the links for facebook and twitter ... etc .

<a href="<?php the_field("facebook",105); ?>" class="icoFacebook a_t" title="Facebook">    <i class="fa fa-facebook"></i></a>

the fields that need change for example social media I add them to custom page like " general page " so the client change them from there this I use that values every where like in this and that files ...

here you are reusing blocks of files ... and reusing data ... with one control panel .

2- widget & short code : I don't like this it need more time to develop its not easy to reuse and to let client use it its a little hard

3- Plugin plugins always big problem for performance the less you use of them the better ...

1. there is big famous plugins you can not replace or recreate like AFC , mailPoet ...
2. there is small plugins but have some idea you need ok take the plugin its mostly 1 files take the PHP you need and the css & JS you need and add it to BOlX as I explain before ( in this case you will take max 50% of the plugin code ) and now the code is your not close box with process you dont need of problems you dont know ...