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Free Social Icons Widget

Social Icons Widget

Plugin Author: WPZOOM

Matej Milohnoja

August 7, 2019 (modified on October 8, 2019)

Social Media

In today’s media-saturated world, it’s tough to make any splash or stand out. Pretty much everything has been already seen and done before.

It’s almost impossible to envision communication, interaction, or life in general, if we’re honest, without them. With such widespread platforms, naturally, they’re heavily used as marketing tools. This should come as no surprise. We’re all witness to the number of adds presented to us every time we log onto our favorite social media platform.

Social Media

Looking at it from the other perspective, these ads are important because they generate more followers on Instagram, more likes on Facebook, enough shares, etc. That, in turn, mean more consumers, a higher number of media links, or at least greater brand awareness. The reason we’re mentioning all this is, so you’ll understand the importance of integrating social media plugins. You should add these onto your site right off the bat. If you need more proof, go on the web and try to find a site that doesn’t have some kind of social media links on it (and is not the miraculously still live Space Jam site from ‘96). Chances are, you’ll have a hard time locating one and only if you’re extraordinarily persistent.

To hop on the social media marketing train or not to hop?

Although being a rebel and a trailblazer is something to be admired, in this specific instance you really should go with the flow and hop on the social media marketing train. By doing so, you’ll get an easy way to interact with your potential customers. Be it by directly selling a product or service, simply raising awareness of it, or creating intricate marketing campaigns.

Social Icons Widget by WP Zoom

A beneficial tool that will allow you to make the first steps in this process is the Social icons widget plugin from WPZOOM. With it, you’ll be able to quickly set up icons which link to your social pages directly on your page.

What is Social icons widget plugin?

When you break it down, this is a pretty simple plugin. It adds a considerable gallery of icons to your default WordPress database that you can use in pretty much any situation. First things first, however. Before you can get into all the icons, you need to know how to set everything up.

What can I do with it?

Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll see that a new widget is added to the list of ones you can already use (in the appearance>widgets menu section).

To implement it, all you need to do is drag and drop the widget to the page section you want on the right side. It’s then automatically integrated into your theme. In our example, we’ve put it right at the top of the sidebar. The position within the section will always remain, so you can move the sidebar freely without fear that anything will get out of place. You can, of course, position the widget in any other section.

Social Icons Widget Positioning

Customize the icons

Once you’ve decided on the optimal position, it’s time to customize how the icons will be displayed. Since the visual aspect of your site is the one making the first impression on your visitors, you’ll probably need to spend some time to create the perfect combination.

Social Icons Widget Title and Display

The title and text are self-explanatory. You can add a title and subtitle of sorts to emphasize your icons additionally. Both features entirely optional and if wish to use the icons, you can leave both blanks. We do suggest using a title at least. It does fit in nicely with the icons and you can use it as a call to action of a sort. After you’ve decided for, or against adding a title and/or text you get to set up how links will work. All the options are really down to your preference. There is no right or wrong decision in this case.

Moving right along, we get to the display settings. Again these features are standard ones you would expect like alignment, style, size, and color. All of these characteristics apply to all icons so that you can set them up best suit your site and your theme. Investing some time here can mean significant changes in the frontend for your users. You can opt to go for something big and flashy, or something more subdued if you’re looking to put the focus on other aspects of your site.

Social Icons Widget Display

Icons database

Finally, we get to the selling point of the whole plugin – the icons. There are so many of them they have to be sorted into sets, five of them to be exact:

  • Socicons
  • Dashicons
  • Genericons
  • Academicons
  • Font Awesome

Each set has its main grouping reason, but you’ll be able to use any icon for any link.

Keep in mind, the more popular icons should be used as they’re intended. There is simply no reason to switch out a logo that is recognized worldwide.

Going through the groups, you will notice some social media icons repeat but in different versions. This will give you even more options to customize your icons fully. Additionally, you’ll be able to change the icon and hover color for each icon individually, not just as a group like the previous option in the menu. Apart from the primary grouping, you’ll be able to sort through them using subgroups. You’ll even have a search bar for the most detailed filtering.

Social Icons Widget Filtering

Adding or removing icons is done through just a couple of clicks. Furthermore, you’ll be sorting them with a drag and drop system, just like the one you used to position the widget in the first place.

Social Icons Widget Frontend

There is a really cool feature where when you’re adding a new link. The plugin itself will try to guess what the links are for and assign the optimal icon for it. Now, this isn’t something that will be pointed out as a key feature which you can’t live without. It certainly is a nice touch and welcome addition, though.

Summary

Taking everything above into account, there isn’t much more to say about this plugin. It offers a simple, yet robust solution for an aspect of your site that you can’t neglect. Not only does it provide you with everything you’ll ever need where icons are concerned, but it’s also free to use. If not for everything else that could be the sole reason you should check it out. However, be assured that the devs have done their job and regardless of the price, or lack of it, you’ll be thrilled with Social icons widget.

 

Plugin Info
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  • Last Update: March 7th, 2024
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