If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

What can make your blog stand out when bookmarked?

What will make your blog easy to recognize amongst all the other booksmarks a reader has?

What can offer an extra element to your blogs branding?

Its got to be the favicon, easy to add yet can provide an easy way for a reader to see your blog and get back to it without having to search through endless bookmarks until they get to yours.

Adding a favicon is as easy as 1,2,3

For this we are going to use the plugin Favicon Head simply download the file and upload it, for those of you new here I will show you how and where to upload in the following snippet.

Simply download the plugin and unzip it to a folder on your desktop. Ive created a folder called ‘MattNutts’ everything I will use for this site will be kept in that folder so its easy to get to and I know where everything is.

For this you will need an ftp transfer programme so you can upload the unzipped files to your webserver I use CuteFTP but there is plenty of others out there.

Simple steps to add the plugin and get it working.

1 Click on the link to download the file then extract the files to the folder you have created for the files.To create a folder right click the desktop and select new and then folder.

2 Start up your ftp software and enter the details for your server, these will most likely be Username, Host, Password and Site Name.

3 You need to upload the files to /wp-content/plugins if you have installed wordpress into a subfolder other than the Site Root (the first area your ftp will find) you will need to browse to it, it could be something like - wordpress/wp-content/plugins. The easiest way to tell if you are using a subfolder is to browse to your wordpress homepage for mine I just type in http://mattnutts.com yours could be the same but your site name or it could have extras after it like .com/wordpress or .com/myblog

4 When you see the folder open it so you are inside your plugins folder on your server then select the favicon-head.php file and drag it over to the plugin folder, the upload should start and everything will transfer over.

You need to create your favicon using photoshop or some other sort of paint programme and save it as a small file something the size of 16×16 is good, the file name you save it under doesn’t really matter I saved mine as favicon.gif, I then uploaded it to my themes images folder but the root of your wordpress install is fine. By the way my logo and favicon were designed by Graphic Identity so if you have any graphics and logos you would like head over there and see what they can do for you.

Once that is done head over to your Admin area in wordpress and click on Plugins, choose activate next to the favicon head plugin. Then head to options and click on ‘Favicon Head’ this will bring up the options for the plugin, for now we can ignore the ‘Animated Favicon Location’.

You need to enter the location of your favicon, for mine it is in my theme so it would be something like /wp-content/themes/mytheme/images/favicon.gif but if you uploaded it to the route then /favicon.gif is fine.

Once you have the location choose to save and head to the front end of your blog and refresh the page. You should see the little image you created appear instead of a blank image at the start of your blogs web address in the browser.

Now when you bookmark your blog can be easily found due to your image, something a reader can relate to and remember.

Its not a must have item but the favicon can really help a reader and give you an extra design edge.

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!