Sunday, October 15, 2006

Add a favicon to your blog

favicons

It is great to have your blog as something distinct from the rest of the other blogs in the blogosphere. Be it in the way it looks via the template or the way you converse with your readers, there’s something about a blog that exudes the aura of the person behind it. And there are also other things like the favicon.

What is a favicon?

You probably surf the ‘Net everyday and you see on the address bar on your browser a small icon beside the URL of a site or a blog. If you add site to your favorite bookmarks, you could also see that little icon. I personally think that it is great to have those little icons because it helps me sort out which site is which. A simple glance at it and - voila! - I easily identify it. You could also put one on your blog if you like.

How do you put a favicon?

It’s not very difficult. You need to decide on what icon you would like to put there. It could from a picture, a drawing or a logo that you made. I recommend that you use a simple image. Why? You need to see something that could be distinguised at 16×16pixels. Using your favorite graphics software, create one. You could probably use a bigger canvas like 64×64 pixels then just resize it later. Save the file as .ico. If you are using Photoshop, you need to install a plugin which you get from here. Make sure you name it as favicon.ico.

After you created your favicon, upload it at the directory with your index or home file. Then, you have to put this at the header of the files on your site:

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

If you test it and it doesn’t show up right away, just do a refresh. The next time someone visits your blog and bookmarks it, your favicon will show up. This would help you in making your blog distinct, indeed.

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