How to Install a Favicon for your Wordpress Blog

Welcome to Bakerview Consulting!

Today’s lesson is about how to install a Favicon for your WordPress Blog. If you have a Blogger blog, I’ll be posting a tutorial on how to do this on a Blogger blog in a few days.

Are you staring at your computer trying to figure out WHAT the &*^% a Favicon is? and why you would want on on your blog?

I was like that also – until I realized how important the favicon is in branding. Branding is so important these days – to you – to me – to anyone trying to sell something! A Favicon is the little graphic at the corner of the tab on your browser. Depending on which browser you use, if there isn’t a favicon present, an empty box outlined by dotted lines is present.

Here’s a test Identify the following four favicons.

How did you do? Hopefully 4 out of 4! I don’t know if you are like me, but I tend to have tons of tabs open on my browser when I’m working. I’m sure I’m not supposed to…..but it is pretty easy to click between tabs using the favicons!

So let’s learn how to do this for your WordPress blog.

The first thing you want to do is to create a graphic.

This is the graphic that I created for this blog. Nothing fancy. I created it with the graphics program that I have, Art Text. You can use photoshop or any graphics program that you have. Things to keep in mind:

Keep it small – I set the size at 50px X 50px when creating mine
Keep it simple – as it will be really small, I suggest some initials and some colors from your blog.
Save it as a PNG, ICO or GIF file type

Now you need the “plug-in” that will facilitate the installation of your Favicon. If you look at the graphic below, look on the left hand side to see the highlighted word “Plugins”.

Just below that is the “Add New” button. Click on that and bring up the following screen.

Type in the word “Favicon” and then click on “Search Plugins”.

The above graphic shows the result of the search. We are going to use “All in One Favicon”. (There are several plugins that you can use, but I prefer this one.) Click on “Install Now” below the title and you will get the following screen.

The above screen tells you that the plugin has been successfully installed. You now need to click on “Activate Plugin” and you should see:

Once you have the plugin activated you need to tell it which graphics to use.

In the above graphic you can see the title of the plugin (All in one Favicon) under “Settings” on the left hand side of your blog back end. Click on it.

This gives you the ability to upload your favicon to your blog. If you know the URL, enter it, or click on “Upload Favicon” to find it from your computer or some other site (photoshop, etc.)

Please note: use the field for the type of file you have. If you saved your graphic as a PNG, use the PNG field. Once entered, click on “Save Changes” and you should see: