Favorite icons are an interesting and unique way to help your visitors remember your site. They appear as little icons to the left of your domain name in your users’ browser. Should your user bookmark your site, the fav (or favorite) icon will also appear next to your site name in their favorites list. Should you construct a fav icon that is closely related to your logo or extremely memorable, this little icon can even help you bring visitors back to your site. These little icons will work in Internet Explorer as well as Mozilla Firefox, so a larger majority of your users will be able to see your fav icon.
First of all, choose your fav icon (or shortcut icon) very carefully. As it will be so heavily linked to your website and can become a permanent part of your visitors favorite list, select a design that fits your needs and is memorable. If you need image design services, contact your cheap web hosting services company to see if they have any vendors they work with or recommendations for you.
The icon you create or that is created for you must have dimensions of 16 x 16 (pixels). This image can be done in 16 colors, 256 colors, or RGBA. These are all image modes that can be selected when constructing images. If you are unfamiliar with image design and will be hiring someone through your cheap web hosting services company, be sure to make them aware of these parameters. If your favorite icon exceeds any of those parameters, it will not load in your users’ title bar or favorites.
Next, you must get your image online. Connect to your cheap web hosting services package via FTP and in your “root” directory, upload the icon you created. It is vital that this icon is placed in your public root web site directory. For most users, this public root will be /public_html/ or /public_docs/. If you are confused as to where your public root directory is located, do not hesitate to contact your cheap web hosting services company.
Most importantly, this file must be renamed to favicon.ico . You can rename it once it is on your server. Ensure that you are not leaving a .gif or .jpg extension. The full and complete file name must be favicon.ico Anything more or less will render the icon unusable.
If you would like to get a bit more complex, you can always customize each page to have a different favorite icon on your users’ screen. To do this, you can rename the new icons to whatever you want. Keep in mind, these new, renamed icons will not work by default on your homepage, you must modify your website code for them to work. You can do this by adding the following lines between your tags. The tags proceed the tags and come before the tags. Customize the following line and add it to your page in order to add specific fav icons to specific pages.
‹link rel=”icon ” href=”http://www.domain.com/newiconname.ico”›
In order to get the most mileage out of your favorite icon, make sure to encourage your visitors to bookmark your site. In most browsers, this can be done by hitting CTRL-D. Inform your users of this. They can always go to Favorites then Add Favorite in order to get you in their reference list. You can also make a nice button right on your website that will add you to your users’ favorites. However, this would require a bit of Javascript to execute properly, which may not load correctly in your visitors’ browsers. In general, it is good to avoid Javascript when you can, though this browser scripting language can do lots of neat little things. Many modern browsers will prompt a user to “Run ActiveX Controls” or “Reduce Security Settings” in order to run the Javascript. Most of the time, they will not say Yes to these requests. Also, it creates some concern about the security of your website.
If you need further assistance designing your webpage or creating your favorite icon, feel free to contact your cheap web hosting services company. Often times, affordable web hosting companies have a list of vendors or companies that they work with on a regular basis. By working with these select companies, you may be able to acquire further discounts. Alternatively, you may hire an image designer through an independent contracting site such as rentacoder.com, freelance.com, or odesk.com . Remember to keep your favorite icon simple (because it is so small), memorable, and relevant.
