How To Add A Favourites Icon To Your Webpage
When browsing websites I notice that many have been set up to display a little icon next to their website address in my web browser:
I felt that I would like my own website to have it’s own little Favourites Icon (called a favicon ) and after reading up a bit about them realised that although there are many software programs sold to help you create them they are actually very easy to create for free. I therefore thought I would write this short Blog Post to show you how I created mine for free in case you would like to do the same.
The first task is to create your icon. I used the “Paint” program included free as part of Windows. All you need to do is create a 16 pixel by 16 pixel drawing using only the 16 colour bitmap palette.
Warning: A 16 pixel square is SMALL! Try to keep your icon simple or it will just be a blur!
The icon I created, and saved as 16 colour bitmap called “favicon.bmp” looks like this:
I then used the free image viewer program IrfanView to view my icon file. While viewing it I clicked on “FILE > SAVE AS” and saved it as “FILE TYPE = ICO – Windows Icon” with the name favicon.
Once I had my “favicon.ico” file I used FTP to upload it into the root directory of my webspace.
I then used a Text Editor to add the following extra line to my “index.html” file just before the “</header>” tag:
<link REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”http://newsletter.ebook-download-shop.co.uk/favicon.ico”>
I uploaded my modified “index.html” page and when I viewed my webpage my little favicon magically appeared! Amazing; I had created my own little favicon for free without spending a single penny. Why don’t you try it!
Have fun!
