This started out as a gentle suggestion to a fellow blogger, that she might consider adding a favicon to her site. Owing to my usual overzealous approach to things, I created a favicon based on what appeared to be her logo. After sending her this small file, I then created a post on one of my sites to explain what a favicon is and how it represents your site on the web. 

Then, I put the question out to a few of my associates asking them what they thought about favicons, and whether they were relevant, useful, ignored, or what. My first respondent said, absolutely, they represent your brand and should be used. Second response was similar, followed by a suggestion to create this blog post, explaining how to create and use one.

OK, I’m going to give you the “how I created mine” explanation here. In a later post, I’ll describe how I include a favicon on my websites. So, here we go.

There are a few ways to create favicons, but I’m only going to give you the two I’ve used here. One involves using a piece of software, named IrfanView. This versatile image editing software is free and will allow you to open, modify, and “save as”, many different graphics formats. You can download it from places like Filehippo, or Ninite. You’re welcome!

Mac users, you’ll have to find something that compares and fill me in on what works for Apple.

OK, here’s the easy way out. Just point your browser at: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ and upload your image, then download your icons. You may want to play around with your file first, to get it into a perfect square. Since the favicon is going to come back to you as a 16X16 pixel square, you’ll have a better idea of what to expect if you submit a square image in the first place.  Here is the original – 48X48.

 Here’s how it looks as a favicon – 16X16.

That’s all for now. I’ll give you some hints on how to put a favicon on your sites in my next post.

Enjoy!