Getting Free Icons

Background

I received an email that referenced one of my existing posts. I have received similar requests in the past, but this time I decided to do something different. When you run a blog or website, there are all kinds of visitors from all kinds of places in the world visiting and reading what you have to post about, even if they do not agree with it.

The Message

Hello -

I was reading your website
thealmostengineer.com/technology/2020.02.08-lacing-up-my-bootstrap
and wanted say thanks for the resources on website icons you mention. I'm currently developing a website and this was very helpful.

However, many of the icons from the websites featured have restrictions on commercial use, so I wasn't actually able to use them- quite a disappointment, I'm sure you can understand.

Anyway, while checking elsewhere online, I found this list of websites with icons that are free for commercial use: REDACTED It was incredibly helpful.

I thought I should share it, as I'm sure your readers need icons for commercial purposes too and they'll no doubt find the list useful. Would you mind adding it as an additional resource?

Thanks again for your help!

Best,

Dana.

I intentionally redacted the link to the other website from this post for the reasons that I state below.

Research

I found one other blog post that contained similar verbiage about how they had read a post on the person's blog, commented on something related to that post, and then suggested that a link be included to a different page on a different website. Now that particular individual, who I will not name, wrote a blog post in addition to including the link for the page as requested.

The Problem

The problem with this message is what the message says. In the article from my website that they linked, it talks about using Bootstrap Icons. According to the email that was sent, the icons are not available for commercial use, which is actually the opposite. I checked the Bootstrap website for the License and part of that license states...

It requires you to:

* Keep the license and copyright notice included in Bootstrap’s CSS and JavaScript files when you use them in your works

It permits you to:

* Freely download and use Bootstrap, in whole or in part, for personal, private, company internal, or commercial purposes
* Use Bootstrap in packages or distributions that you create
* Modify the source code
* Grant a sublicense to modify and distribute Bootstrap to third parties not included in the license

Right there in the license it says that it is available for commercial use, thus what was said in the email is incorrect.

A common SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactic is to get other websites to link to your website. On other hand, as a content creator, you have to be mindful of which websites you link to, as the creditability of those other website and can help or hurt the credibility of your website. In addition, the research that I did into the actual website, indicated that the website is not as trustworthy as it may seem, although it has plenty of links from some other websites.

Conclusion

Combining the facts that 1) Bootstrap does provides the icons for free and for commercial use, 2) that another person has blogged about receiving a similar message, and 3) the trustworthiness of the website was highly questionable, I chose not to share the link on my blog.

As a content creator and blogger, being in control of your website’s search appearance and ranking is more than about how many views you can get to your website. It is also about the other websites that your website links to.