The Pursuit of Making Money OnlineDo Yourself a Favicon
Webmaster November 1st, 2007
If you’re a webmaster or freelance designer who doesn’t know what a Favicon is, chances are that you’ve been living under a bridge. OK, that may have been a little harsh - but you really should do yourself a favor and create a Favicon for your website(s)!
What is a Favicon?
Per Wikipedia:
A favicon (short for 'favorites icon'), also known as a website icon, a page icon or an urlicon, is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon, and many recent web browsers can then make use of them. Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser's URL bar, next to the site's name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page's title in a tabbed document interface.
Why Should YOU Have a Favicon?
There are a couple of reasons why I always recommend the use of Favicons:
1. Most importantly, it helps distinguish your website when a potential visitor is digging through their bookmarks/favorites. Also, for those who surf with tabs - Favicons are a great way to remind a visitor that they’re browsing YOUR website and should purchase YOUR products or services.
2. It’s easy. There are a ton of web tools on the internet to take your existing website logo (or any picture) and shape it into a Favicon. You don’t need to know how to use photo editing software, and you don’t need to know how to program.
3. If you don’t, you look silly. Stick with me on this for a second. Say you’re using Joomla CMS for example. Joomla has it’s own default Favicon that it uses when you install their CMS on your server. If I browse to a website that has that ugly default Joomla CMS Favicon… it simply feels amatuer.
How Do YOU Create a Favicon?
Listen, I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here. There are many instruction guides out there on the SERPs for this sort of thing, and I’m not going to bother competing for those results! Instead, I’ll link to a few of my favorite resources:
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/
http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/
… So do yourself a Favicon and create a Favicon! It only takes a couple of minutes and is one of those “small details” that makes a website pop.
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November 1st, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Excellent tip Paul! Per your recommendations we installed our favicon. “Small details” are often the easiest to miss.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:49 pm
I always laugh when I see people using joomla or mambo cause they always have the favicon of the script.
I agree it does look amatuerish.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Thanks for the reminder, I have still yet to do this but with an upcoming new design, a favicon is on my list. I had completely forgotten about these until I was recently listening to the Boagworld Podcast where this exact topic was brought up.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:07 am
I love your ideas. I also do agree with you. Its my good luck to have you in proper time. Thank a lot.
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 am
Also worth mentioning - you don’t need to be a web expert to install a Favicon. I just went to a favicon building site, uploaded the photo I wanted, it spat back a zip file with detailed instructions of how to put it on your site. It took me a grand total of 5 minutes.
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:53 am
TKO - Anytime sir, anytime.
Thomas - I’d like to see some of these CMS’s possibly include a Favicon Tool in their software. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Dave - No problem, and thanks for reminding me about the podcast. I’ve been over listening to WebmasterRadio.fm daily!
Sauna - Anything that I can do, just let me know.
Kelly - I completely agree. I *think* at least one of the Favicon links I listed has complete instructions. If you know how to FTP, you can install a Favicon.
Thanks for the comments all!
November 5th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Great point. Personally, I’ve created favicons using Photoshop by saving off a 8×8 (or, it may have been 16×16) image as a favicon.bmp file, then changing the extension to .ico. Load that to the site’s root folder and you’re set.
November 15th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
the post inspired me to try it out, but i couldnt figure it out =\