If you don’t know what a favicon is, just look up at the address bar of your browser where it says http://up-and-coming-blogger.com.  Now you see that green ‘b’ to the left of the web address?  That’s this blogs’ favicon.  It’s a kind of mini logo for your site.  It’s one of the many ways to ‘brand’ your blog.

Why do you need a favicon?

Well I guess you don’t actually NEED a favicon, but it certainly helps if you are trying to present your blog as a serious offering.  Now I’m not saying that you can’t have a serious, professional blog without a favicon, but there’s no doubt that if you look at any of the ‘big time’ blogs you will find a favicon.

It also helps your readers identify your blog.  The favicon not only shows up next to the web address, but also in the browser tabs as well as in the favorites/bookmarks.  So when one of your readers is scanning through a long list of blogs/sites, yours will be more quickly identifiable with your ‘mini logo’ sitting right there next to your blog name/address.

Your options: Try to create and add one on your own | Let me help.

I will try and provide you with some basic instructions on the process of creating and implementing a favicon to your blog, but letting me help you with the process is also and option.  It can be a quick process when you know what you’re doing and therefore I don’t mind taking a little time to help if it means the further refinement of your blog.  So don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any assistance.

Continue boring instructions…

How do you add a favicon to your blog?

The first thing you need to do is to come up with a ‘mini logo’.  Considering you have a tiny 16×16 square to work with, you need to keep it simple.  If there’s too much going on it will just look like a tiny little mess.  As you may have noticed, I just use one letter for both my blogs.  The green lower case ‘b’ for Up-And-Coming-Blogger and a black Uppercase ‘M’ for “Motivate Thyself”.  My suggestion for whatever you do would be to pick a color and font that represent your blog logo.  Then go from there.  As long as you have those two atributes you should come up with something that embodies the ‘essence’ of your blog logo.  (In some cases you have a shape or image that represents your ‘brand’, in which case you can use that for your favicon.)

Once you’ve created your ‘mini logo’ (for information on the tools I use when working on blog design, look at the bottom of this post) you can go to one of the many ‘favicon creator’ websites that are easily findable through a quick Google search.  I personally have been using this one.  It is here where you can upload your ‘mini logo’ image and have the favicon created.  (Note: The ‘mini logo’ you create doesn’t have to be 16×16.  the ‘favicon creating’ website will do this for you.)  Once created you can download the favicon to your computer and have it ready for upload to your blog files.

Now you will need to upload the favicon file that you just created to your blog using an FTP program.  I use this one.  (I’m not going to go into the details of how to use and FTP program.  You either know how or you’ll need to do a little Googling to find out.)  Once uploaded (I upload mine to the ‘uploads’ folder) you will need to use a Wordpress plugin to do the rest.  I use ‘Favicon Manager‘.  Add this plugin to your blog and then go to ‘Settings’ - ‘Favicons’ and type in the location that you uploaded the favicon image.  Then just click on the ‘Update Options’ button and you should see a preview of the favicon.  If you do, then you have successfully added the favicon to your blog.  To be able to see this change take effect on your blog you will need to clear your browsers cache.

Feel free to add your 2 cents.

If I missed anything or you have other/better ways of doing this, feel free to share it with us.  And if you have any questions, the comments sectoin awaits.