A favicon (short for “favorite icon”) is that small icon displayed on the browser URL bar, on the bookmark lists and, for certain browsers, on the navigation tabs. While a favicon will not drastically change your traffic it will certainly improve the look of your blog, adding a unique icon and making sure that readers are able to individuate your site inside bookmark lists easily. Below you will find a step by step guide to create a favicon.
1) General Guidelines
A favicon is nothing more than a 16 pixels by 16 pixels icon, and the file has a .ico extension. As you can imagine it is pretty difficult to put complex graphics in such a small frame. When designing your favicon, therefore, you should concentrate on simple images or letters. Make sure that the color of the favicon reflects the color of your website, so that readers will be able to associate the icon with the site.
2) Using Photoshop (skip this point if you are not using Photoshop)
Adobe Photoshop is probably the best alternative for a well-designed favicon. The standard Photoshop can not handle .ico, so the first thing to do is to download a Windows Icon Photoshop Plugin (you can download it here).
Once you have the Plugin installed you should create a 64 x 64 pixels canvas and start playing with it. After you are done designing the favicon you will need to resize the image. Go to the Image Size menu and click Resample Image. This process will make sure that the image will not blur as you scale it down. Finally just save the 16 x 16 image as “favicon.ico”.
3) Using MS Paint and web tools
Favicons are very simple image icons, meaning that even Microsoft Paint should be enough to create a good looking one. The easiest way is to create a 32 x 32 pixels JPEG image with Paint and then use the online service “Favicon from Pics“ to convert the JPEG image into a favicon.ico file.
4) Uploading the favicon.ico file
Once you are done with the favicon.ico file you should upload it to your site. Just make sure you place it in the root directory, which is the directory where the index file is located.
5) Changing your header
The final step is to change your header, which is the code that goes between the
<head>and</head>tags. All you need to do is to add the following line:<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
Notice that this code will only work if the favicon.ico is located in the root directory.
6) Testing
Everything should be in place now, just open your browser and point to your site to check whether the favicon is appearing or not. Bookmark the site and open a couple of tabs to see how the icon is looking, if you do not like it just go back to the drawing board.
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