hal9000.ie

Facebook favicon as it appears on IE browser

A  good favicon is one that is obvious to the eye, will be readily recognisable as being related to your site. Bear in mind the small size you have to work with. You won’t fit many letters in and colour is key. A design or logo works best. It will add a professional look to your site by carrying through your branding.

The favicon appears in a number of places, including:

• the browser address bar
• the Favourites or Bookmarks -  making you a little easier to find (if your logo is strong)
• a desktop shortcut
• RSS feed
• Google Toolbar

A favicon can be created and added to a WordPress site quite easily using the following steps:

1. create, or use an existing, logo or image and make it square
2. use an online favicon creator, such as   www.favicon.cc  to shrink your image to a 16 pixel square image and then save it in  .ico format.
3. call the image favicon.ico
4. upload a copy of the file to your sites main directory of your site (public_html) using a FTP client.
5. upload another copy of the file to your sites main Theme folder
6. in your WordPress Admin, edit your header file, header.php by finding the line that begins with <link rel="shortcut icon" and ends with /favicon.ico" /> and overwrite with:                                   <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?/favicon.ico” />                                                      (note no spaces between ’bloginfo’ and(‘template                                                          
7. Clear your browser cache. This is simply clearing out your temporary   internet files. Do this in Internet Explorer by selecting Tools, then Internet Options, then General by selecting  Delete Browsing History and tick the box for deleting ‘Temporary Internet Files’.
8. You’re done!