How to Create a “Favicon.ico” File

Ever wondered how they put those little pictures in the the website URL, well it’s pretty easy. Simply use a free photo editor like Gimp or anything that will let you crop and re-size your images, you could also create your own if your a bit creative, but I just used our picture. “Another 15 seconds of fame for me”

Do you think a video would be better or is this clear enough? Let me know what you think…

Ok let’s get going…

1. Create or choose a picture that you want to use as your website symbol or brand. That’s me and Sonya “Hansom beast aren’t I…”

2. I simply used our picture and took it into fireworks, cropped the area I wanted.

3. Then re-sized it to 16X16 pixels.

Yes, it is freak’n tiny!  just save it as favicon.ico thats it! Don’t save it as picturename.favicon.ico If you really want to go the extra mile, you can also create a 32X32 pixel icon, which will automatically be scaled down to size for the Favorites menu and the location bar. Apparently you can put both 16X16 and 32X32 pixel icons into the same icon file. Windows will use the 16X16 for its menus and the 32X32 when the user opens up a folder that is set to display large icons. It’s not really necessary if you couldn’t be bothered.

4. Save the image as an ICO file (named “favicon.ico“).  NOT “picturename.favicon.ico” I emphasize this because I initially made this mistake…Duh!

I was lucky someone told me to check before I waited too long to figure it out…Upload it to your website. There’s no need to upload one to every directory of your site if you don’t want to waste space – just put it in your root directory and the web browsers that support favicons will  locate it eventually.Note: It can take a day or so before you see it, so just have patience.

What If? My Web Host Doesn’t Allow ICO Files!

If your hosting company won’t allow files with the .ICO extension to be uploaded, you could try to work around it by uploading it (in binary mode) with some other extension (like GIF). Once it’s on your site, rename it using your FTP program to the correct extension or get a hosting service that will allow it.

PS. Don’t ask me how to do this because I don’t know! I have never had to find out. Google, Yahoo, Bing it.

Or Get a Hosting Service That will Let You.

For the majority of readers out there, this post may seem like I am stating the obvious. But it has come to my attention that some of the newbies may need a little help with this topic.

Whenever you are writing a new blog post you should write in some kind of word document then save it before you copy and post it to your Wordpress Blog.
For Example: Microsoft Word, Wordpad, Notepad.

You can find Microsoft Word by clicking

- > Start (bottom left corner of your screen) – > All Programs, – > Microsoft Office
You can find WordPad & Notepad in, Start – > All Programs – > Accessories

This is what Start looks like in Vista, “The circular object with the red, green, blue, yellow wavy flags”

My preference is Microsoft Word because of all the extra functions and “Don’t quote me” I think it was Office 2007 where word also started offering an extra option where you could choose a Blank Document or New Blog Post.
Anyway the reason I recommend you write and save your posts into a some kind of word Processor is you will have a copy of all your work, what would you do if for some reason your site had a major malfunction and you lost the lot, don’t think that this is not possible, it can happen!

It may even get lost by your hosting service. “Not likely, but not impossible” another good reason is, you can then go back to a previous article or post that you have saved separate to your blog and add-subtract at will and not have to worry if you run out of time and leave it incomplete, you can simply come back tomorrow and finish off. Yet another good reason for doing this is you could have some kind of upload problem when you finish writing your blog, “possible internet connection issues” then all your work will have to remain in limbo while you sweat and worry if your work will still be there when things come back to normal.

There many, many more, very good and valid reasons why you should always write you primary copy into a word processing software before uploading to your blog. It may save some major headaches in the future.

When you are done you simply copy and paste your work into your wordpress blog then ad your anchor text and pictures and pretty things up.

Always give a good description and use your “alt tags” to name your pictures appropriately to help google and the other search engines find all your content .

Once you understand this, head over to Pings, Pinging, Ping Lists and learn how to install them and use them correctly.

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