I am very happy to announce the release of the Social Circles plugin for WordPress.
This plugin allows you to display social media icons in any widget area on your site. You can display them in your header, your sidebar or even your footer.
An Alternative to What’s Being Used
You might wonder why I created the Social Circles plugin, and the reason is pretty straightforward. I started noticing a trend across many sites that are run by women.
Instead of displaying social media icons with the “logos” of each social network, they were displaying custom social media icons that used text to label each one.
A Hip Design Concept Got Me Thinking
I was intrigued by this, so I forked the Simple Social Icons plugin that we developed and made a few simple changes to the interface and graphics that are included.
All you need to do is select the Icon Font, Icon Color and Hover Color and enter your social media URL’s and you’re sporting the new Social Circle plugin.
The Social Circles plugin includes the following fonts: Corsiva, Georgia, Lobster, Oswald, Sinhala and Ubuntu. I’ll be adding more fonts to this as they are requested.
Use the Social Circles Plugin for Client Sites
Because the Social Circles plugin is GPL licensed and hosted in the WordPress repository, it’s free for you to use in any way you see fit.
This means that it can be used by an individual blogger or by a developer who wishes to put it on their client sites.
Download the plugin and tell me what you think in the comments below.
Good looking alternative to the other social media plugin you guys released.
Would love to see a plugin that retrieved social media counts, Facebook likes, G+ circles, etc.
Keep up the great work!
Hm, food for thought.
Neat idea. I like this plugin, because it uses text instead of icons.
I’d like to see a few traditional font faces like Arial, and maybe Open Sans since it’s quite popular these days.
I noticed something that might be a bug. If I change the font and save, the font dropdown only shows one font, the one I selected. I have to reload the widget page to get them all to show back up. Using Firefox. I’m not sure if this is intended behavior, but wanted to mention it while leaving feedback.
Thanks for reporting this. I’m not seeing it on my local demo, which I’m viewing through Chrome. I’ll take a look at Firefox.
Excellent addition Brian! I have noticed that trendy style of social media icons more frequently, too. Looking forward to integrating this on future client websites. Thanks!
Yeah, what I like about the text variation is that I don’t have to update the plugin if/when services like Twitter rebrand and go with a new logo.
Oh man! Good point, thanks for pointing that out.
What, no Comic Sans?
Heh, I was THIS close to include Papyrus in there just for grins.
Oh please no. People would use it. Really.
Love them Brian; so much I already have them on my site! Thank you for continually making fresh, new improvements. !
Heh, you don’t mess around, do you? Looks great on your site!
Yay! This is awesome! I have been using the SocialCo font to make these lately. Which, of course didn’t have a pinterest or google plus so I had not make those in photoshop. Thus proving women are complicated :p
Excited to use this!
Awesome Rachael, let me know if you end up using it by dropping me the links. Would love to see them in action!
I’m curious, without having tried the plugin, what dictates the size of the circles when they display?
Right now, it’s one size – 64px by 64px, with a border radius set at 50%.
Are you planning to update it to make people able to change the size in the future?
Love the icons and the font. But, I do agree that I would love to see the option to choose a size for the icons and possibly to align them in the center instead of just right and left?
I found this plugin to be quite handy on my site. Very easy to use and pretty. Thanks Brian for your hard work
Thanks for this! It’s been a little bit of a pain getting social media icons to display just the way I like (using the Mindstream theme). This is the simple/sharp solution I’ve been looking for.
Continually impressed…
Hi Brian! Excellent plugin and I love the color combinations you have used in the plugin that’s awesome.
Thank you so much for making such an aesthetically pleasing AND user friendly social media icon set! I have been searching for one that would fit might sites style and until now, was not successful! You have me as a follower ! Thanks again!
You betcha Lauren, great to hear that you’ve found something to use.
That’s my hope, after all – to provide something of value that’s easy to use, easy on the eyes and what not!
Oh that is NICE! I like Lindsey’s buttons she used for the theme Modern Blogger (my theme is from that), so I’m going to stick with them. Although if they weren’t on the theme I would be all over this. Totally going to keep this in mind if I truly start to make Themes.
Nice to have a choice of Social icon plugins.
“I started noticing a trend across many sites that are run by women.”
Good to see that you are taking a lead from the ladies Brian.
I just got a few moments and added them to the footer of my site – they’re beautiful! Thanks for remembering us ladies.
They look as though they were made for your site – great choice of colours.
Thanks – I’m using Oswald in the rest of my site too, so it’s perfect. Brian has great taste in fonts.
Very cool plugin Brian,
You may find the Socialico font icon pack useful for this:
http://fontfabric.com/social-media-icons-pack/
I came across it a few months back; I’ve been using it in many of my newer design mockups.
How did I miss this? Awesome plugin!
Just installed these on my site. They look great! Just the change I was looking for with my recent re-design. Thanks so much, Brian.
Just added the plugin and love how simple it was to update with all of my urls and easy to customize with my brand colors.
Next time around, I’d really like to be able to change the text color too.
I’m very happy to have found your website, Brian, and I love this plugin. You’ve made it very easy to customize. I just installed the Mocha theme on my site and Social Circles looks fantastic–as if it came as part of the theme. Thanks!
Awesome job on the site so far Kelli, I just love it when someone can move right in with their content. Thumbs up!
really excellent plugin and I love the color combinations you have used in the plugin that’s awesome!!!
Brian — this plugin is fantastic! I love the simplicity of them, and I know I will use them for several projects.
Thank you, for yet another time-saver!!
BRIAN thx for this plugin, it’s the best, nice share
Hi Brian, I loved it first time I saw this plugin. Fed up of seeing social icons on every site you visit, plus I believe it would help reduce time it takes for the website to load.
On another note, I’d appreciate if you could do one of two things. Could you do a tutorial on how to create a tags sidebar similar to the one you have on your website i.e Popular Tags
OR kindly suggest a plugin that does this, if you know of any.
I’ve been searching for a plugin that does this. I look forward to your reply. Thanks in advance.
Best regards
I look forward to your response.
Best regards
Brian – Great idea behind this new plugin, can’t wait to load it! You’re getting a lot of font request…may I please add Century Gothic (to go with Prose) to the request list.
I love your new web site design, you inspired me to change a site design I’m currently creating on Prose. The minimalist concept is so “clean”. I don’t know if this was done on purpose, however I noticed that your Search Box seemed to be running off the page on the right side (maybe it’s just my computer).
Thank you for your great work! – Theresa
PS: I finished my site reno using Agency and I love the way it turned out!
I’ve been fortunate to have some nice feedback and I owe it to your great design. Thank you!
Hey Theresa, thanks so much for the comments about the plugin and the design of the site. Glad to hear you’ve got things rocking, and I’ll definitely consider adding Century Gothic to the plugin fonts!
Love this
Any chance you might be adding a Sans font any time soon?
It’s definitely possible, have any requests?
Is there a plugin which shows social media counts, I want a plugin to show number of twitter followers, facebook likes and rss subscriber and want to use it in the sidebar
Hm, I’m sure one exists – but I don’t know it offhand. Here’s an article that might be of interest to you.
Brian, I’d love it if this (or the simple social icons plugin) had the ability to add a few custom links.
Specifically, I’m looking to add a link to my Vimeo channel.
Hey Jami – I don’t know if there’s a simple way to allow this option, primarily because the images, etc are held within the plugin folder. Any time we would do an update, it would get overwritten.
Hey Brian,
Thanks for the awesome content as always! I was wondering, is this the plugin you use to get the social icons under your “411 on me” sidebar widget area?
I was also wondering how you change the gravatar to a custom image?
thanks again
No, it’s not the Social Circles plugin that I used for the social icons in my sidebar — that’s just CSS and HTML. As for the custom Gravatar, here’s a good article that will show you how to do that.
Is there a way we can change the size of the icons? 64 by 64 is on the large size in my opinion.
Yes, you could ultimately target them via CSS and reduce the height/width if you wanted.