Favicons explained

Here at T&S we recently started creating favicons for all our clients’ websites. What is a favicon? Well, visit any popular website and take a look at your browser’s tab, or up at the address bar. You’ll see a small 16×16 icon. Each browser has a default icon (Internet Explorer 7 has the IE logo), but if the site has specified their own favicon, it will appear instead. The favicon is also shown in the bookmark list in most browsers.

If you create a favicon for your site, a visitor will associate it with your site. It will create additional branding reinforcement.

There are several ways to go about creating a favicon. Just use your favorite graphics editing program to create a 16×16 icon. Make sure you view it a 100% to ensure that it’s easily identifiable. Then you can use one of the following methods for converting it into a favicon.ico file.

• Paint Shop Pro / PhotoShop plugin
• Online converter

Once your file is ready, just put it in the main (a.k.a. root) directory of your site. There you go! Your favicon should now automatically appear when anyone views or bookmarks your website.

For more info on favicons, check out Wikipedia’s page on the favicons.

Edited in March 2017: With recent versions of WordPress, you can upload a JPEG or PNG file under Appearance > Customize > Site Identity in order to assign a favicon to your site.