How to add a favicon to a website

A Favicon ( Favorite Icon ) is the small image you see before a website link in your address bar. If you are using a tabbed browser you can see it at the beginning of the tab or if you use bookmarks you can see at the beginning of the bookmark. It's a small image file and adding one to your blog or website is very very easy.Which is why I'm surprised at the number of blogs and websites that haven't added a favicon yet. In this lens I will show you how to create a favicon easily and for free, and how to add it to your blog or website. It might be not a big thing but it will help your blog to stand out from the rest and give it a slight edge with the competitors.

The image above shows exactly why you should add a favicon to your blog or website. Notice how some links stand out in the book marks list. Similarly they stand out when someone is working with lots of tabs as well. It also improves your websites branding power.

You might be thinking is it really worthwhile to fight for that attraction in a bookmarks list? If someone has bookmarked your website or page he is probably gonna visit it again anyway. Well that is not always the case, it could be a hastily done bookmark from a plug-in like "Read it later" in Firefox, and when he or she is back to check on the bookmarked pages having a favicon makes sure your post gets maximum attention.

And it does look nicer than having no favicon at all. And the best reason is it is very simple and can be done in 5-10 minutes. Its even more effective if you can add a animated favicon.

If you don't know any image processing creating a favicon can be a daunting task , but luckily for you and me there are plenty of tools available in the internet where you create a favicon for free and some websites let you host them for free as well.

Wants part of the image as the favicon

If you want to cut crop and resize an image before you create your favicon then Genfavicon is my preferred choice. They let you upload an image and have an easy to use preview where you can resize and crop your image. You can set your preferred favicon size as well. 16 x 16 is the standard size used by many.

Have the image , just want the favicon?

If you have the images and just want to generate the favicon Iconj is a good place to try out. You can upload an image and they generate the favicon for you and if you want you can host it in there servers for free as well. Having the ability to host in there servers is important, because not every photo sharing site lets you upload .ico files, which is the file extension normally used for favicon files.

Listed above are my personal favorites but there are plenty of other sites that provides the same service. Type "free favicon generator" in Google and you can find many other websites that generates favicons for you.

Most web platforms now provide the option of uploading your favicon. In WordPress, Blogger and many CMS its just a matter of uploading the ico file in the settings.

If you're using custom HTML in your site then use the following code.

<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="https://hubpages.com/images/favicon.ico">

Make sure to give the correct path to the ico file.

Although it is easy to add a favicon you should spend some time choosing a suitable one. Below are few things you should consider when choosing one.

• It should be recognizable - Typing a long word in a square and making it a 16 x 16 image will make it unrecognizable. A picture with lots of details is also not suited for this. Check out some remarkable favicons at Smashing magazine if your running out of ideas
• Related to your website or brand - Although this is not necessary this helps in creating your won identity. Squidooand Youtube are good examples for using favicons to improve there identity.

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