You have probably seen a small, tiny image that appears next to a website title in the browser. If you didn’t know already, it is called a favicon and you can add it yourself to help your visitors identify your website faster. The favicon will help users recognize your site instantly. However, the favicon is also used to increase your brand awareness, and to build trust among the public.
Here’s an example of a hugely popuplar favicon (only partly joking), the WP Learning Lab favicon:
Not having a favicon is one of the most common mistakes admins of a website can do. If you don’t know how to add a favicon to your WordPress blog, here is a complete guide that will explain everything for you.
Why your website needs a favicon
Just as we said before, the favicon will establish an identity for your website. Furthermore, it shows the usability of your blog and even improves the user experience. If you check really quickly in your browser, you will notice that every professional website has a favicon.
Think about how users have several tabs open in their browser windows at one time. As the number of tabs increases, the names of the websites get hidden. That is why the favicon is important, because it will let users identify your tab faster and give quick access to it.
How to create a favicon for your website
Always keep in mind that a favicon is a simple square image, so don’t make it too complicated. Usually, the best thing you can do is to use your logo in the favicon.
Ideally, the favicon should be something like 16×16 pixels, or a 32×32 pixels image. You can create it easily in Photoshop or any other image editor. To make one, create a square image of 128×128 pixels; it will allow you to easily work on it. When you finish the work, simply resize it into the recommended size, and save it as a PNG image. We recommend you use the PNG format for your favicon because most of the browsers will display the favicon in this format. However, the old versions of Internet Explorer won’t do it. You can always check, but a good idea is to convert your favicon from the beginning into a 16×16 pixels .ico file. You can easily convert it back to PNG when you need, with the Dynamic Drive favicon generator.
How to add a favicon to a WordPress site
If your favicon is ready and you want to add it to your WordPress site, you can do it through the rood directory of your blog and the FTP. Simply copy and paste the code below into the theme’s header.php file of your site:
Let’s say your theme doesn’t have a header.php file. Or maybe it has one, but you cannot find it. It is not a problem, because there a plugin that can do everything for you. Go to wordpress.org and get the Insert Header and Footer plugin. Download and install it to your blog. After you activate it, go to Settings, and Insert Headers and Footers. Paste the code we gave to you above into the header section. Make sure you save everything before leaving the page.
If you want to add a favicon to your WordPress site without using a FTP at all, try another plugin called All in One Favicon.
Conclusion
As you can see, it is quite simple to add a favicon to a WordPress site. We hope this article helped you!