March 20th, 2008

A Favorites Icon is the little logo for your site that appears in the address bar up top just before the URL. It used to be a sign of elite status on the web since it proved you had good designers who had great skill and rare software on hand. Today it doesn’t mean much of that, and almost everyone has one, and that means your site should too.

Now it means that sites absent of a Favorites Icon (the file named ‘favicon.ico’) may stand out as less professional.

If you already have one and need to upload it, simply place it in the root directory of your site. Some hosts may require you to login to your control panel to upload it through there, but that’s less common.

If you’ve already uploaded it but can’t see it when you go to your site, you may need to clear your cache (under the dropdown tab ‘options’) or restart your browser.

There are a number of sites out there that allow you to upload an image to their site to automatically generate a pretty good Favicon, but make sure you give it a sharp, crisp, high-contrast, high-saturation image of at least 160×160, and it being perfectly square will help too. If you or your graphic designer are familiar with PhotoShop, this is all very simple. If not, don’t sweat it too much; you’ll still do okay.

If the option is present, select to merge the icon with larger sizes like 48×48.

When you get a site built, ask your designer to create a Favicon, and make sure it will be created, uploaded and tested for you. Ideally, you won’t pay extra for this. It should be a fairly standard item in any site construction or redesign.

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