Standing out is usually good if you want to get noticed. Something that people can remember you by always helps when you’re promoting you or your business. That’s why I’ve added a “favicon” to my blog - favicon stands for “favorites icon” and it’s a small graphic that is displayed to the left of the URL in the location bar of most modern browsers (like Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7). Like the name suggests it’s also used if you add the site to your favorites/bookmarks. Tab-enabled browsers will also display the favicon along with the title when you have multiple tabs opened.
I think having a favicon is a good idea - it gives your website a little logo that people might start to recognize (and if your website actually has a logo you should definitely add it as a favicon). Creating a favicon is not difficult:
- You just create a 16×16 graphic using an image editor like MS Paint or Photoshop (- or if you have a program that can create .ico files that’s great).
- Next you need to convert your graphic into an actual icon. You can use this favicon generator that supports transparency which I think is pretty cool (my favicon is transparent).
- Then you upload your favicon.ico file to your website (preferably the root of the domain).
- The final step is adding the special code to the
<head>section of the page you want to add the favicon to:<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
When you upload your favicon to the root of your domain the icon should display on every page of the domain. Many browsers automatically look for the “favicon.ico” file at the root and display it if they find one.
The favicon I created for Hannes Johnson dot Com looks like this (only smaller). It’s only the letters H and J because I think favicons should be pretty simple - there is only so much you can squeeze into a 16×16 space and people should see right away what your favicon is supposed to be of.
What do you think? Does my favicon look good? Does your website have a favicon?
Technorati tags: favicon, graphics, branding, hannes johnson, logo, blog marketing, code.
2 responses so far ↓
Get More People To Read Your Blog | Hannes Johnson dot Com // Jan 12, 2007 at 3:33 am
[...] #3 Design is more important than you think - like I said before, standing out is usually good. Although I’m didn’t get a custom made theme for my blog I don’t think thousands are using this theme right now. But I will definitely modify it later on to make it unique - or start from scratch with my very own. [...]
Robert Irizarry // Mar 22, 2007 at 1:33 pm
The favicon looks good. I’ve yet to implement one but look forward to doing so once I have a clear idea of what I want it to be.
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