How to create a Favicon for your website

One of the easiest things to do for your website, which also improves the appearance and credibility of your website, is to add a favicon. A favicon is the little image that appears to the left of a pages address in the address bar above. A favicon must have an .ico extension in order for it to be recognized as a favicon, and although you may be able to rename your image as something other than favicon.ico, it is recommended that you leave it as that. Even if you do not have your favicon set up correctly a browser may still display a favicon.ico image if it is present in the default directory.

So here are some ways that I have found that you can create a favicon for your website.

Online Tools

Online tools that allow you to simply upload your image and they generate a favicon.

• FavIcon from Pics
• Dynamic Drive
• Favicon Generator

Online tools that allow you to create a favicon online and then export it.

• X-Icon Editor
• Favicon.cc
• DeGraeve.com

Photoshop

My preference is to use Photoshop to create my favicon images. By default Photoshop cannot save .ico files. To do this you will need a plugin. A great plugin can be found from Telegraphics. This plugin will allow you to save any image as an .ico file.

Check our next post to see how to insert your favicon into your website. Please note that I do not recommend downloading small programs to generate your favicons. These will only clutter your computer and with everything out there they are completely unnecessary. NEVER buy a favicon generating program, it's a waste of money, especially with all of the free options above. Happy favicon generating!

Have a way to generate a favicon that is not on this list? Leave me a comment and I will make sure to insert it.