Social Networking

The NEW Social Networking section in Site Settings allows you to configure and display two kinds of social networking icons on your site.

A) A set of icons on your site pages which link directly to your social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, Flickr and your YouTube channel.

B) An AddThis icon sidebar like the one displayed on the left edge of this site.

Adding Social networking icons and links

1) Select the Social Network Accounts section in your Site Settings

2) If this is the first time that you have used this facility, you will need to 'activate' it first . .

3) Once this is done, a control panel listing the available social network icons will be displayed, and they are shown in the order in which they will be dispplayed on your site. You can chnage the order later, if you like.

4) Enter the address for the social network you want to link to in the field beside its icon. As you'll see, each unconfigured text field shows a pale string of text as an example of how your address text will look. (If you later want to remove an icon from display, simply remove the adress from the text field beside its icon in this section of your site settings.)

As you'll see in the example above, the address you enter is shown in black text. If you decide the order of the icons isn't the way you want, then you can click on the green arrows on the right to bump that network higher in the list.

5) Once you have entered your addresses, you can decide where you want the icons displayed on your site - centred at the top of site pages, overlaying the right side of your site's banner image, or centred at the bottom of site pages.

Icons centred at top

Icons overlaying the right side of the page banner

Icons centred at the foot of your site pages

As you can see from the examples above, the icons don't work well overlayed at the right side of the banner on the example site due to the design of the banner. In that case, at the top or at the foot would be better. Try the positions on your own site to see which you prefer.

6) Click on the 'Update' button to confirm your choices and have the link icons displayed on all of your site pages.

Enter the full URL for your profile page in each applicable box.

Note: these are simple links to your profiles. Social networks like Facebook or Twitter will supply various other types of widget, including 'like' and 'follow' buttons or widgets displaying the latest posts. You can add such widgets to your site on any page by editing it and clicking the Source button.
 

AddThis

In the Social Network section of your Site Settings you'll also find the facility to add an AddThis bar like the one at the left hand side of this site, which your users can use to 'Like' your site,

1) Select the 'AddThis' section in your Site Settings . .

2) Enter your AddThis code into the field provided, and click on 'Update' to confirm the dit and automatically have your AddThis icons displayed on your site.