How to Create a Favicon for Your WordPress Blog

A favicon, short for ‘favourites icon,’ is the small icon which appears beside a Web address in your browser, and it also appears beside saved bookmarks. A favicon helps to identify your website and your brand, and adding one to your WordPress blog provides a small but meaningful visual representation of your online presence. A favicon will often be a brand logo or anything else which you regularly use to for identifying your various online resources. You can create a favicon in most graphic design and editing programs, and in order for it to be displayed correctly, it should be 16×16 pixels and saved as favicon.ico. While there are various plugins which allow you to easily add a favicon for your WordPress blog, manually creating one is also a fairly straightforward process.

 

1. Using an FTP client (most hosting companies provide a Web-based one which should be accessible from your account page), upload your favicon.ico file into the folder of your current theme. This folder will be located in wordpress\wp-content\themes.
2. Upload another copy of your favicon.ico file to the root directory of your FTP server, since this will allow the icon to appear in RSS feeds for your blog.
3. Log in to your WordPress administrator dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Editor to edit your current theme.
4. Locate the Header template in the sidebar to the right and click on header.php.
5. Search for the line of code beginning with <link rel=”shortcut icon”. If this line does not exist, then add it just beneath the <head> HTML tag near the top of the page. Edit or enter the code so that it looks like this:
   <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php echo get_stylesheet_directory_uri(); ?>/favicon.ico” />
6. Click “Update File” to save your changes.

Wrdprss Favicon

• If you change your theme, you will need to repeat the above steps while also remembering to upload a copy of your favicon.ico file to the root directory of the new theme.
• If you want to have a favicon with a transparent background, you will need to use the PNG format and save your file as favicon.png.
• If you prefer to use a plugin rather than using the manual method detailed above, you can do so using All in One Favicon, Multicons or Captain Favicon among others.