Monday, February 15, 2010

What are Favicons! besides 16px X 16px jpg or png files ?

Favicons are a very useful method of branding your blog with your personal style, and are a useful recognition tool for your readers to identify your blog. If you are reading Blogger Buster in Firefox (or have bookmarked my site in IE) you will see an example of a favicon in the left hand corner of your address bar.

Here is how to enable a favicon for your Blogger powered blog in a few easy steps


  1. Ensure you have a copy of your blog logo (or another image you would like to use as a favicon). This should be in JPG format for use with the Favicon generator.

  2. Go to the Favicon Generator page, and upload your image, then click on "Create Favicon". After a second or so, the page will reload and you will see your newly generated icon appear in the box.

  3. Right click on your icon and choose "Save Image As...". This icon will be in PNG format, and you can rename this anything you wish. Save the icon to a convenient location on your computer.

  4. Next, go to your Blogger dashboard and create a new page. Upload your icon as an image in the post. If you do not already edit your posts in Edit HTML format, click on this tab and copy the URL of your image from the HTML code. The URL for your uploaded image will appear like this in your post's HTML code:



    You need to save this post (albeit temporarily) so it would be advisable to backdate this post, then it will not be confusing for visitors who wonder why you are posting such a small image in your blog!

  5. Finally, go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard. Just before the closing tag, paste the following section of code:


    
    

    Be sure to replace the URLs in red with the URL you copied from your post.

  6. Finally, save your template. Your new favicon will now appear in the address bar!

Note: if you use Internet Explorer, the favicon will not appear unless you have bookmarked your blog and refreshed your browser.
If you would prefer to upload your PNG icon to a different image host, you the method is almost exactly the same, except that the URL you will use to enable the favicon should match that where your PNG image is hosted.

No comments: