oliverdavies.uk-old-sculpin/source/_posts/create-block-social-media-icons-using-cck-views-and-nodequeue.md

---
title: Create a Block of Social Media Icons using CCK, Views and Nodequeue
date: 2010-06-23
excerpt: How to create a block of social media icons in Drupal.
tags:
  - drupal-planet
  - drupal-6
  - drupal
  - views
  - nodequeue
  - oliverdavies.co.uk
---

I recently decided that I wanted to have a block displayed in a sidebar on my
site containing icons and links to my social media profiles -
[Twitter](http://twitter.com/opdavies), [Facebook](http://facebook.com/opdavies)
etc. I tried the [Follow](http://drupal.org/project/follow) module, but it
lacked the option to add extra networks such my
[Drupal.org](http://drupal.org/user/381388) account, and my
[RSS feed](http://oliverdavies.co.uk/rss.xml). I started to create my own
version, and then found
[this Blog post](http://www.hankpalan.com/blog/drupal-themes/add-your-social-connections-drupal-icons)
by Hank Palan.

I created a 'Social icon' content type with the body field removed, and with
fields for a link and image - then downloaded the favicons from the appropriate
websites to use.

However, instead of using a custom template (node-custom.tpl.php) file, I used
the Views module.

I added fields for the node titles, and the link from the node's content. Both
of these are excluded from being displayed on the site. I then re-wrote the
output of the Icon field to create the link using the URL, and using the node's
title as the image's alternative text and the link's title.

I also used the [Nodequeue](http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue) module to
create a nodequeue and arrange the icons in the order that I wanted them to be
displayed. Once this was added as a relationship within my View, I was able to
use node's position in the nodequeue as the sort criteria.

To complete the process, I used the
[CSS Injector](http://drupal.org/project/css_injector) module to add some
additional CSS styling to position and space out the icons.