Website Icon: Create a Favicon for Your Site
By Dave Maloney
Ever wondered what that tiny website icon or bookmark icon that shows up next to a site's address in your browser bar is actually called? It's a "favicon," (short for favorite icon) and it's pretty simple to add one to your site when you're on a content management system.
Create a Favicon
Make your own. If you have Adobe Photoshop or some other image editing software, you can use it. Bring in your logo graphic, initials or whatever you want your image to be; the simpler the graphic the better. A favicon file size is 16 pixels x 16 pixels, which doesn't give you much room to get fancy. (You can cheat a little: make your file size 32 x 32 pixels, and the web browser will automatically size it down to the 16 x 16, giving you a little more detail!)
Save your new website icon as "favicon", but here's the funny part: Photoshop won't give you an option to save your file in the .ico format that it has to be in. Instead, choose a .gif or .png. Next just go to your saved file in your computer's Finder and rename it there to "favicon.ico".
Find a Favicon generator. If you don't own any graphics programs, don't worry; like everything else, just look online. Do a Google search for "create a favicon", and you'll have plenty of free favicon creators to choose from. Most of them will let you draw from scratch in an oversized 16'' square pixel window, or will let you upload your own image into the program. You can preview your design, make changes, and then save your new .ico file back to your computer for free!
Uploading Your Favicon to Your Site on a CMS
If your site is on HubSpot's CMS Go into your dashboard, click "Settings", choose "File Manager", "Upload files." Browse your computer and select your "favicon.ico" file, click "upload" and you're done! Log out of your dashboard, refresh your page, and your new favicon should be there.
If your site is on Concrete 5's CMS Go into your dashboard, click "Staewide Settings", "Upload Bookmark Icon." Browse your compute, select your "favicon.ico" file, click "save" and you're done! Log out of your dashboard, refresh your page, and your new favicon should be there.
If you're site isn't on a CMS: Almost as easy as above, if you're not scared away by the idea of adding a little piece of code to your website's HTML. It's all there when you search "create a favicon."
Although a favicon has no value towards SEO or Pagerank, it does offer a little extra detail of professionalism, and can help your brand stand out in a list of bookmarked sites.