favicon .ico

adminranger · #1 (**permalink**) 09-13-2008, 11:39 PM

Had to put a favicon on one of my sites today and just about forgot how it was done. If you are wondering what a favicon is simply look in your browser's tab at the WB with the red square around it.
I think having this makes your site look a bit more professional than just a blank page or the e in your browser window.

How do you accomplish this?
1) Once you have your logo or picture prepared reduce the size of it to 16x16 and save it as an .icon file

Easy way to reduce and save any picture is to visit http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ (only reason for deeplink is to get at the tools I am in no way affiliated with these guys)

2) FTP the new file to your root directory

You can check the ftp by inputting h ttp://mysite.com/favicon.ico in the browser.

3) Now insert this code into your pages, at a minimum put it on the index page. For blogs you will edit your theme and insert it into the header.php below the HEAD tag

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"> or

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.mysite.com/favicon.ico">

4) Just wait a bit and it will appear. Took about 30 minutes on the site I completed today.

Hope some will find this a useful tip.

ewdowney · #2 (**permalink**) 09-17-2008, 08:38 AM

Excellent post! One of the guys in my shop asked me how to do that just the other day. And you gotta love DynamicDrive - they're such the bomb...

TechieGuy · #3 (**permalink**) 09-17-2008, 08:45 AM

I use a favicon on my blog. I can never remember the link tag to include in my pages.

Thanks for the info.

ShakespearesBrother16 · #4 (**permalink**) 10-03-2008, 12:05 PM

Thank you! This is probably one of the most simple thing that you can do to a website, but it really makes a huge difference.
From my experience (which has been limited enough!) it's quite frustrating to try and remember how to do it, whenever you need to.

KRH · #5 (**permalink**) 10-03-2008, 02:24 PM

i have two favicon meta tag:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="http://www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico" />

<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

am i using one extra meta tag?

jazzguy · #6 (**permalink**) 10-03-2008, 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ewdowney

Excellent post! One of the guys in my shop asked me how to do that just the other day. And you gotta love DynamicDrive - they're such the bomb...

I love DD!!!!!!...

I use them all the time. Good one EW...

Great Elephant · #7 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 08:09 AM

great post

alana r · #8 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 09:32 AM

made one today, dd make it really easy to do, even for me

thing is though, I can see it on chrome but its not showing in IE?

lisa · #9 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 12:08 PM

alana,

Clear your cache and re-start IE. See if that works. Seems I had that problem too but doing that fixed it.

ssmorgan · #10 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 02:08 PM

I think Internet Explorer is a little funny about favicons. From what I remember, the website has to be bookmarked in order for the favicon to appear in IE. This, of course, means that no one will see the favicon on his/her browser unless he/she has your website bookmarked.

Great Elephant · #11 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 02:20 PM

yea i just noticed that... meh what can you do

lisa · #12 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 03:02 PM

Yeah I think that's what it is, Sherif. I knew it was something quirky with IE.

WB Sponsors