What’s a Favicon and Why Should I Have One?
February 8th, 2009
A favicon is a small 16 by 16 pixel image that shows up in the address bar for a website. For this site you’ll notice the favicon is a scientist with glasses. A favicon is good for your website because it can help people remember your site and if they have your site bookmarked they can find your link quicker since they now associate your site with the little icon.
Because of the small size of a favicon you can’t really use complex images or long logos. A simple image is fine. You might even have to cut your logo down or redo it to be favicon friendly.
Favicon’s aren’t your standard image. They are .ico files. A quick google search should find you an online favicon generator to make one easily from any image. You don’t have to bother paying for a program or for a site access there are tons of free online favicon generators.
A favicon is normally installed at the root of your website (meaning right in the public_html section, not in a separate folder). Then you add the following code to the <head> section of your templates:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico"/>
A favicon will help your site stand out from the crowd and gives your site a subtle memorable aspect.
