Setting Up A Favicon For Your Blog

Once you get a well known blog established, one often overlooked, yet simple task is adding a favicon for the blog.

Design a logo that's recognisable in a 16 px x 16px size image.
Create two logo files, one a .ico, the other a .png. You can use IrfanView, or another free graphics tool, to do this. For discussion about the two files, see WikiPedia: Favicon.
Upload the logo files to an image hosting server. You may find the free hosting service offered by IconJ to be useful.
Add the favicon definition into the blog HTML. Your blog has a default favicon (the white on orange "B"), and you'll have to override that..

The first step is the most difficult - and is mainly why I took a long time, in setting up an icon, for this blog.

Once you create the image files, just use the Blogger "Favicon" wizard, on the dashboard "Layout" page.

Here's what you probably have, right now:

<head>

...

<link href='http://www.blogger.com/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/> <<== Default favicon - provided by Blogger (and built in to the template)

Here's what you need:

<head>

...

<link href='http://www.blogger.com/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/> <<== Default favicon - provided by Blogger (and built in to the template)
...

]]></b:skin>

<link href='http://www.yourhost.com ... /favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/> <<== Your custom favicon .ico file, Microsoft Browser compatible
<link href='http://www.yourhost.com ... /favicon.png' rel='icon' type='image/png'/> <<== Your custom favicon .png file, for non Microsoft browsers
</head>

Add the two "link" records at the end of the template header, immediately preceding the "</head>" record. It is important to add them after the "</b:skin>" entry.

Comments

Chris said…

My question is: What service do you use for hosting the icon? Picasa doeson't work because they don't allow .ico files. I had to go with a website hosting service to upload the file. .png files work, but of course, are not looked for by all browsers (old IE).

22/1/09 13:51

Marf said…

What purpose does the .png serve? Is it for additional support for browsers that don't support .ico files? I didn't know there we any, except for text-only browsers like Lynx, but those wouldn't support a .png anyway.

I was under the impression that all you needed was the favicon.ico

25/1/09 13:06

Zarra de Ruijter said…

Thank you! I finally got my favicon to work on blogger, after hours of searching the web.

23/5/09 00:47

mynameiskate said…

Works, thank you!
I was putting the code right below the HEAD element. It made all the difference to add it just before the HEAD element closes.

Thanks!!

6/9/09 16:06