in Web Publishing |

Create a Favicon to Brand your Site or Just do it for Fun

How to create a favicon.ico for your site or blog.

FavIcon is a favourite icon.

Basically, you create a small graphic (16 X 16 pixels, tiny in fact) which will show up in the address bar when someone looks at your site. It will also show up in their bookmarks, if they bookmark your site. Using a favicon will help brand your site and give it a polished look. Plus it gives those us of who are addicted to tweaking and twiddling with their sites, something else to do.

It’s not hard to create a favicon. Once you save your tiny graphic as favicon.ico you upload the file to your site, it should be in the root directory so it’s easy for web browsers to locate. Then you add the code between the head and /head tags in your HTML code. Note: If you run the Thesis WordPress theme. One of the features is a favion option which uploads your favicon for you. Your theme or template may have the same option, check first and save yourself the extra work.

How creative can you get with such a minuscule image? See what you can do. The smaller you make your file the blurrier it gets. See the example image which is one I use for my personal site. When it is condensed and compacted down to a favicon size you really can’t tell what it was meant to be. So, that wasn’t a great image to create a favicon with.

Have fun, let me know if you load a favicon. I’d like to see what other tweakers and twiddlers come up with.

Wikipedia has a page about Favicons.

Choosing an image to convert to a Favicon

As you can see from my example, a favicon is very tiny.

Choose the image you want to convert into a favicon wisely. It should have very basic lines, a very simple uncomplicated design.

Stick to one or two colours (white works well). Adding too much colour will create a blur when the image is compacted down to size.

The image you choose needs to fill the image space, cut away any extra background before you convert it to a favicon.

Create your Favicon Image on the Web