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The blog title says it all doesn’t it? This post is a direct result of The List post, but with one small change. In stead of crocheting social media icons* I decided to go the easy route and just download them from a website. Job done!
It was Hannah, of Not Your Average Crochet, that actually inspired this. She has the cutest little social media icons on your blog! You can read her blog post about these cuties here. If you read the comments to that post, you’ll see my comment and her response: she got them by searching Google for “free social media icons”. I did the same, but I searched on Pinterest…. As you can image there were loads! So many choices! In the end I settled for these icons inspired by Pantone Fall 2012 colours.
Now the question, is how do I get the icons onto my blog? For that you can follow the very clear instructions by the Geek Fairy in this post. (It’s specifically for WordPress users, so sorry Blogger bloggers I don’t know how you guys get icons onto your blog.)
I followed the Geek Fairy instructions to the letter, yet my icons wouldn’t resize to a smaller than 100 x 100 size. I wanted mine to be about half the original size, so I typed in 50 x 50 in the Advanced settings fields as the fairy said I should, and I could see those dimensions in the text that I pasted into HTML Widget, yet it still showed up as the original size. Very strange indeed.
Thankfully I got around the problem by changing the image size in the Image Library (as opposed to changing the size in the draft post.) Here’s how I did it:
1. Go to the Media Library and find the social media icon. If you hover under PNG, the Edit field will appear. Click on Edit
2. Once you’re in the Edit option for the image, click Edit Image:
3. Now you can scale the image:
4. Type in your desired size. I chose 50 x 50. Click on Scale:
Save the change and do it for all your icons.
Once you are happy with the size, insert these images into a draft post as the Geek Fairy says you should and follow her instructions for adding the links.
That’s it. You may not even need to change the size in the Image Library. Maybe my WordPress theme is just dodgy, or I was doing something wrong. Who knows. Either way, it really is very easy to add social media icons to your WordPress widget sidebar. It’s so much neater too, don’t you think?
*I you want to crochet social media icons, you can use the patterns I found on the tugboatyarning website here and here. The same principals would apply as described above: Photograph the crocheted icons, upload them to the image library, change the size, use them in a draft blog post, add the links and past the text of the draft post into a text widget for your sidebar.
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HannahDavis said:
So cute, so cute! I had to resize my icons too — mine are 40 x 40 pxls. I like that set because they have Ravelry buttons, unlike most other sets!
crochetime said:
Thanks for the headsup on these free icons. They’re great! Did you also have to resize them in the image library?
HannahDavis said:
I resized them before I uploaded them, but I kept the original sizes too just in case I ever needed those. I also used Photoshop to make my Goodreads icon from the Twitter one.
knitnrun4sanity said:
Hmm food for thought here….
Jo The Geek Fairy said:
Glad the tutorial was useful 🙂
Some themes don’t resize in the widget area as they should, but you did the right thing, or you can always resize images before uploading them with a free resource like http://www.picmonkey.com/
I also have lots of other free icons on my site http://geekfairy.co.uk/category/free-social-media-icon/ – enjoy making your sites pretty!
foxash13 said:
Geek Fairy’s instructions are clear and makes the process simple. Thank you for sharing!
Natasja said:
I’m glad you found it useful!
kpsays said:
Between you and GeekFairy, I was able to FINALLY put social media buttons on my blog! My blog is only 3 months old, and I’m now to the point of putting finishing touches to it. I have struggled to understand html coding, but y’alls instructions were SO easy and I have beautiful, professional buttons on my site! Thank you again!!! xoxo
Natasja said:
I’mm so glad I could help. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. Good luck with your blogging endeavours
kpsays said:
You are a lifesaver 🙂
Patch said:
Finally done this. Big thank you to you and Geek Fairy. I had doubts…. but it WAS easy. Done Facebook and Twitter, going to add a Pinterest one soon 😀
Natasja said:
Glad we could help 🙂