Shipping third-party icons
How to credit icons you did not draw when you ship them in an icon pack, with Font Awesome Free under CC BY 4.0 as a worked example.
If the icons in your pack were drawn by someone else, their license decides what you must do. Most free icon sets allow use in WordPress, but many require a credit. This guide explains where that credit goes and walks through Font Awesome Free as an example.
Why the credit belongs in the manifest
Many icon sets put their copyright notice as a comment inside each SVG file. The sanitizer removes comments, because they are not part of the drawing. So a notice inside the files does not survive the import.
The place that survives is the pack's manifest.json, in three fields:
| Field | What to put | Example |
|---|---|---|
license | The license name, ideally its short code | CC BY 4.0 |
author | Who holds the copyright | Fonticons, Inc. |
source | Where the icons come from, and what you changed | Font Awesome Free, sanitized on import |
Easy SVG Pro shows these under the collection on Icons → Packs, on every site that uses the pack. For a license that requires attribution, this is not optional.
Example: Font Awesome Free
Font Awesome's own LICENSE.txt says:
- The icons as SVG files are licensed under CC BY 4.0. The fonts are under OFL 1.1 and the code under MIT, but a pack ships only SVG files, so only CC BY applies.
- Attribution is a condition. The copyright holder is Fonticons, Inc. (fontawesome.com).
- CC BY also asks that changes are indicated. Importing changes the files (they are sanitized), so say so.
Check the version
Open the LICENSE.txt in your Font Awesome download and confirm the license terms for the version you have.
Fill in the manifest
Add the three fields shown below to icons/manifest.json. Add the Font Awesome version you downloaded to source, so the credit stays exact.
Check the Packs screen
After installing the pack, go to Icons → Packs. The credit is shown under your collection.
The three fields for Font Awesome Free:
"license": "CC BY 4.0",
"author": "Fonticons, Inc.",
"source": "Font Awesome Free, sanitized on import"
Other common licenses
| License | Credit needed? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| CC0, public domain | No | Put CC0-1.0 in license anyway, so people know. |
| MIT, ISC | Keep the notice | Put the license name and author in the manifest. |
| CC BY 4.0 | Yes | Name author and source, say that the files were changed. |
| CC BY-SA 4.0 | Yes, and share alike | As CC BY, and your changed icons must use the same license. |
| "Free for personal use" | Usually not allowed for client sites | Do not ship, or buy a commercial license. |
Your own icons
For icons you drew yourself, pick any license you like and put it in license, with your name in author. The starter itself and its three example icons are GPL-3.0-or-later.