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Favicons-
The word favicon means "favorite icon". It can also be called a
website icon, a bookmark icon or an url icon. A favicon is a 16 x 16
square icon that is associated with a particular website or web
page. The favicon picture or symbol will will show up next to your
website in people's bookmarks and up in the address bars. The
original favicon feature was created by Microsoft for Internet
Explorer.
Using Favicons:
Internet Explorer and Firefox have a program where, if someone
bookmarks your website, it associates a particular icon with your
website in the bookmark. It tries to obtain that icon by first
requesting for "favicon.ico" from the directory of your web page. If
it cannot find such a file, it will try to obtain it from the root
directory of your website, failing which, it will simply use a
default icon for the bookmark. On the other hand, if the favicon.ico
file is available, the icon will also be displayed beside your
website name in the "Favorites" menu, the location bar, and if the
user opens up the "Favorites" folder, it will be the icon used for
the link to your site.
Favicon Advantages:
A free favicon can help your site stand out in a crowd! They not
only add a cute feature to your
blog
or website, but can help you get more hits as well. I have included
simple step by step instructions on how to create and add a free
favicon, along with providing a link to a site that can take any
image and convert it to the 16 x 16 square pixels required.
Creating a Favicon:
You can choose any picture to create your free favicon. When you
use the favicon generator it will ask you first to upload your
picture. For best results, you might use a square image to upload.
If you have an icon or special symbol associated with your website
or business, then you may want to use that. Keep in mind how very
tiny 16 x 16 pixels really is and try to keep your favicon picture
as basic as possible. Once you have your picture chosen go to the
favicon
generator. Here you will be able to change
the picture into a .ico format, along with getting the picture the
correct size. You can use any converter, not just this one, but I
found this site to be both user friendly and reliable. The next step is
to add the free favicon to your website. If you have a website then
you already know how to upload items to your site. In my case I have
my website stored in my documents, which is also where my favicon
was downloaded. I moved the favicon into my website directory and
then using FrontPage Expressions I republished the site.
The final step is to add a piece of HTML code to your front page.
Use the following code: <link rel="shortcut
icon" href="favicon.ico"/ >. You need to place the code after
the <HEAD> tag in your HTML. Again you probably already know how to
add code to your website. In my case again using FrontPage
Expressions, I simply open my index page then click on "code" in the
bottom left corner. The last advice is "Be patient"! The first time
I added a free favicon I thought it wasn't working because I didn't
see it right away. |
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