How to Add a Button to Your WordPress Website
A few years back, we couldn’t have imagined how much the world would change in the way we interact with content and communicate through images.
Thanks to the rise of simple yet effective tools like Pinterest and Instagram, we are able to curate visually-rich content while also connecting with others through the things we share.
Even Tumblr, the content-sharing platform we all know and love, has shifted gears a bit to become more of a focus group than a broadcasting platform. As a result, many popular blogs on the platform now feature prominently featured buttons that allow readers to share the content with their own circles of friends.
While this is certainly a welcome change, it does present us with a bit of a problem.
How do I add a button to my WordPress blog?
Thanks to the power of the internet, the solution to this problem is a quick Google search away.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of adding a Share button to your WordPress blog or website.
The Shared Website Button
The first result that comes up when you Google “How to add a button to your WordPress website?” is the Yoast WordPress plugin.
It’s the most popular plugin for adding buttons to your site. And for good reason. Not only does it offer a simple solution to a common problem, but it also allows you to completely customize the appearance of your buttons.
We’ll explain more about why this plugin is so effective and easy to use in a bit. First, let’s take a quick look at how to use it.
Step one: Install the WordPress plugin
You can’t start building your button-powered website until you’ve installed the WordPress plugin.
To do this, navigate to your WordPress dashboard. If you use a shared hosting plan from Bluehost or similar service, your dashboard should look like this:
- Bluehost
- Dashboard
- Press
- Quick Overview of your site
- Read Now
- Comments
From here, click on the « Install WordPress Plugin » button to install the Yoast WordPress plugin. This will take you to the WordPress plugin page where you can find all the information you need to install the plugin (e.g., what’s the name of your blog, what’s the category for your posts, etc.).
After you’ve installed the plugin, head back to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Edit Theme. From here, you can fully customize the look of your site.
Customize the look of your buttons
To start customizing your site’s buttons, head to Theme Options. You’ll see something like this:
- Shared Website Button
- Facebook Like Button
- Tumblr
These are all the available WordPress plugins that come pre-installed with the Yoast WordPress plugin. As you can see, the plugin allows you to choose from a number of pre-designed buttons or you can customize each button’s CSS to suite your needs.
For example, if you have a lot of text on your blog and don’t want to keep the button small, you can set a higher minimum font size by editing the CSS. Or if you’d like, you can completely ditch the button and use text instead.
Step two: Create your custom buttons
Now that you’ve got your WordPress dashboard set up with the basics (a logo, background, and links to the homepage), you can start creating your custom buttons.
To make things easier, you can actually use the Yoast WordPress plugin to generate random button ideas. While this might come in handy, don’t be afraid to experiment with different button concepts. It might be helpful to try out different types of buttons (e.g., square, circle, or heart-shaped) to see which one works best for your site.
When you’re happy with the results, click on the “Random” button to start generating random ideas. You can also type in a specific word (e.g., “gold”, “featured”, “contact”, etc.) to get ideas based on what you’ve typed.
As we mentioned earlier, the Yoast WordPress plugin allows you to fully customize the look of your buttons. To ensure that your customizations stay, you need to add code to your theme’s functions.php file. The code below comes from the WordPress Plugin FAQ and is a snippet of code that will maintain your changes (e.g., bigger font size, etc.) when you update the plugin later on:
// For the Random and Featured Button options:
function my_plugin_button_options() {
echo '
'. __('Choose a category:').''. '
';
echo '
'. __('Select an image to use as your avatar:').'
'. '
';
echo '
'. __('Provide a short description:').''.'
';
echo '
'. __('Enter your blog/site url:').''.'
';
echo '
'. __('Add any additional information:').''.'
';
echo '
'. __('Now that you\'ve entered all the necessary details, click on the Generate button to create your button. When you generate a button, you'll be directed to a page where you can find the CSS code necessary to style the button. For example:').'
- Once you've copied the CSS code, you can paste it into your theme's files.
- To preview how the button looks, navigate to your blog's source code.
- Click on the button to see how it works.
'. '