Creating Social Media Icons for Your Website using CSS

In almost every website we see today, there are links to their social media accounts. I think it is a standard now. It’s like, you’re not cool if you don’t have a Facebook and Twitter account!

Recently, I was using Google drive to host my CSS and image files. Now, I removed it. Why?

Because Google drive slows down my website! During the use of Google drive hosted CSS and images, the average load time of this wesbite is around 10-20 seconds for new visitors.

After I removed it, it is now around less than 5 seconds!

I decided not to use any third party CSS code. I wanted to create my own social media icons, and I did! (see the screenshot above or the lower right corner of this page for live demo)

I think the icons I made are so cute that I thought of sharing it to you guys (I appreciate a tweet, like or +1 before you use it!). It loads fast, contains few lines of CSS and HTML code, and it doesn’t use any images! Here’s how I did it, below are the CSS and HTML code I used.

HTML code:

<div id="socialMediaIcons">

    <a class="facebook" href="https://www.facebook.com/CodeOfANinja" title="Facebook" target="_blank">f</a>

    <a class="twitter" href="http://twitter.com/ninjazhai" title="Twitter" target="_blank">t</a>

    <a class="googleplus" href="https://plus.google.com/b/101266899643014043497/101266899643014043497/posts" title="Google+" target="_blank">g+</a>

    <a class="rss" href="https://www.codeofaninja.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" title="RSS" target="_blank">r</a>

    <a class="email" href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=TheCodeOfANinja" title="Email" target="_blank">@</a>

</div>

CSS code:

#socialMediaIcons{
    margin: 0 auto;
    text-align:center;
}

#socialMediaIcons a{
    border-radius: 3px;
    color:#fff;
    font-family: arial;
    font-size:1em;
    height:2.5em;
    padding:1em;
    text-align:center;
    width:2.5em;
    -moz-border-radius: 3px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 3px;
}

#socialMediaIcons a:hover{
    color:#fff;
    text-decoration:none;
}

.facebook { background:#4c66a4; padding:2px 10px; }
.twitter { background:#33bcef; padding:2px 10px; }
.googleplus { background:#D2412E; padding:2px 3px; }
.rss { background:#fa9b39; padding: 2px 6px; }
.email { background:#00D8CC; padidng: 2px 6px; }

And… that’s how I created my new social media icons using CSS!