A Complete Beginner’s Guide on How to Add Social Media Icons on WordPress
It may sound easy to create your own WordPress website, but it can be quite stressful sometimes if not done right. Just creating a WordPress website is not enough. Your aim should always be expanding the reach of your content to a larger scale through your website. There is no better way to do this than by using WordPress social media icons. You can add various social media icons to your website so that the audience can share your content on their social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and many more.
Most WordPress themes come with built-in social media icons. But in this article, I’ll show you how to add the WordPress social media icons if they are not included in the theme itself or if you are not satisfied with the pre-installed WordPress social media icons.
How to add Social Media Icons on WordPress?
The simplest way to add social media icons in WordPress is by downloading a plugin. There are many social media plugins available in WordPress. Among them, Social Icons is one of the best plugins in WordPress to add social media icons. It is very easy to use and packed with many features like multiple backgrounds, grayscale icons, and drag and drop sorting.
You can download Social Icons zip file from its official website and upload the plugin by clicking on Upload Plugin in Plugins>>Add New from your Dashboard. Then click on Choose File to upload it. After that, install and activate the plugin.
Or, you can install the plugin by searching it from Plugins>>Add New in your WordPress Dashboard and then activating it.
After you’ve successfully activated the Social Icons plugin, you can further proceed with editing the WordPress social media icons for your website. First, you need to go to Settings>>Social Icons in your Dashboard. Click on Add New.
Now, you can edit the Social icon name and add the description if you want. You can change the background style, icon size, and icon padding in the General section. You also have the options of enabling icon label, grayscale and open new tab in this section.
Then, you can add the social media links you that want in the Linked Icons section. The Twitter and Facebook icons are added in default. To add other WordPress social media icons, simply click on Add Icon and enter the label and links of the social media site. Once you’re done, click on Publish.
You have now completed linking your WordPress social media icons. After that, you can add these icons to your website in two ways depending on where you want to put it. They are:
Method 1: Add icons by pasting the shortcode in the Editor
This is the more preferred method among the two because you can add the WordPress social media icons wherever you want on your website. But, it is recommended to have some basic knowledge about coding before you proceed with this technique. If you don’t, you can ask someone who is familiar with coding.
After you publish your Social Icon, you can open Settings>>Social Icons. Here, you’ll see the shortcode of the WordPress icons that you edited for your website.
Then, just copy the shortcode and go to the Post from the Dashboard. Find the area where you want to display your WordPress social media icons and paste the shortcode. After that, click on Update and update the post.
You’ll be able to see the WordPress icons once you preview your website.
Method 2: Add WordPress social media icons as Widgets
This is the simpler method as you don’t need any knowledge about coding to add the WordPress social media icons. But, you can add these icons only in the widget ready areas.
Just open the widgets menu from Appearance>>Widgets. Then simply drag and drop the Social Icons widget to the desired widget area.
You can also add the widget using the WordPress Customizer. Once you publish your changes, you’ll be able to see the social media icons on your website.
Concluding:
Extending your content through social media is a great way to increase the exposure of your website. If your website is properly beneficial, many viewers will be more than willing to share it on their social media. This would also increase the popularity and the success of your website. Furthermore, the addition of social media icons can make the sharing process even faster and easier for the viewers as it can be done with just a click.
Such a simple and quick task of adding WordPress social media icons to your website can bring much of a big advantage. Keeping this in mind, I hope that the above information was helpful for you. Here are some more relevant articles that you might find useful.
- How to embed Facebook videos in WordPress
- Adding Instagram to WordPress
- How to add Facebook Fanbox using WordPress Facebook Widget
