How to Add a Favicon to Your Blog

A favicon is the little icon that shows up in the tabs and to the left of your browser bar. It's known as a "Favorites Icon." So in other words it's the bookmarks icon, website icon, etc. Not sure what I mean? Check out the Maw Books Blog and you'll see a small icon in the tab & browser bar. Having a favicon is a great way to further the brand of your blog. Highly recommended. So how do you add one?

For self-hosted WordPress users:
If your theme came with a preloaded favicon simply go to the images folder and find favicon.gif (or another extension). Open the image and using a photo editing program, replace the file with your own image. Make sure to not change the size, etc. Then simply resave with the same name, re-upload and your done! If you're not seeing results right away, then don't forget to clear your cache.

If your theme does not come with a favicon file, then follow the direction found on "How to Change Your WordPress Favicon," it will talk you through creating the image, uploading it and adding the necessary code to your header.

OR you can install the Favicon Manager Plugin as well.

For WordPress.com users.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is already built in, yes?

For Blogger users.
There is nothing worse than having ten blogger blogs open and not being able to differentiate from any of them because they all use the default blogger icon. I'm not on Blogger so I can really just point you in the right direction. But these instructions seem fairly straightforward.

So what are you waiting for? Let's start seeing those favicons!

Tags: blogger, favicon, wordpress

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by WordLily on April 11, 2009 at 11:08pm

I don't think it's built in to wordpress.com blogs — they display the Wordpress Circle-W icon (at least mine does!). :s

Permalink Reply by Trish Collins on April 11, 2009 at 11:53pm

Favicons were recently added to wordpress 2.7.1, which is what wordpress.com is.

If you look under your profile, there's a section for your Gravatar. Gravatar is used to display your favicon. Let me know if you have any questions about this.

Permalink Reply by WordLily on April 12, 2009 at 9:45am

I have a image uploaded (have for a long time) for my Gravatar. Still, no favicon is displaying in Firefox or Safari on my blog ...

Permalink Reply by Trish Collins on April 12, 2009 at 1:12pm

There's two different pics you can have in wordpress.com: your avatar and your gravatar. Wordpress has called the favicon your blavatar because it also works when you do a pingback. I promise it works, because I was able to make it work when I was on wordpress.com. Are you sure you looked under your profile for the gravatar? Because even though you've had a picture uploaded or a long time, wordpress.com only recently (December 2008) rolled out the favicon thingy. So make sure you check in your profile, because avatars didn't automatically become your favicon...you have to upload a picture again.

Permalink Reply by WordLily on April 12, 2009 at 2:17pm

Ah, OK, I've got it working now. The Gravatar is where you said, and mine was already taken care of. The Blavatar (called the Blog Picture) is accessed/viewed/uploaded from the Settings >> General Settings section of the Wordpress.com dashboard. I found the instructions here: http://support.wordpress.com/settings/general-settings/

Permalink Reply by Trish Collins on April 12, 2009 at 2:21pm

I guess I had it backward. :-)

But I love your favicon. It's so lovely in the navigation bar!

Permalink Reply by WordLily on April 12, 2009 at 2:26pm

Thanks! Glad I got it figured out, with your help. :)

Permalink Reply by Shesten @ I Heart Monster on April 11, 2009 at 11:54pm

I used the FavIcon generator over at iconj.com to do mine in Blogger. Luckily they provide free hosting as well. This favicon process is the one I used.

Permalink Reply by Phoebe Jordan on April 12, 2009 at 12:08am

I used your favicon process and it worked perfectly fine for my blog Talk About My Favorite Authors.

Permalink Reply by Britt C. on April 13, 2009 at 6:08pm

This is what worked for me.

Can you guys see it on my blog, though?
Confessions of a Book Habitue

Permalink Reply by Beth Fish on April 17, 2009 at 3:17am

Thanks this worked perfectly and was so easy. The hosting thing is what was stopping me from using a favicon.

Permalink Reply by tanabata on April 12, 2009 at 1:09am

Fun! Thanks for this Natasha. I hadn't even thought about changing mine before, but you're right about them being all the same.

I didn't have any luck with the instructions you linked to for Blogger, not sure why it didn't like the coding, but found these instructions helpful.

Come check out my new favicon at In Spring it is the Dawn.