wayne on July 23, 2008
You might have noticed that I have changed the default BlogEngine favicon to a more personal one. You might see it flashing up there in your browser now. If you don't see it, then your browser is caching the older image, and it should show eventually. Depends on your cache settings. Read on to hear more about it all.
What is a favicon?
A favicon is what a browser will display next to your address in either the browsers address bar, or if you are using a tabbed browser such as FireFox or Flock, it will show an image in the tab. It's a further way of personalizing your blog and the domain name itself.
Why favicon.cc?
Favicon.cc had the best interface and the most features I have found for favicon creation and editing. I would love to hear about any other sites that might compare though.
I figured I'd make a new favicon really quick just to give me something other than what every other 'default' BlogEngine.net user has. I took the gravatar image I made and uploaded to favicon.cc through their import image function. Once uploaded, I was able to grab a favicon right away.
I decided to go a step further, and I added another 'frame' onto it. In essence, that is techno-babble for another image, or blank slate. On that, I drew in 'Only a lad', why? I don't know...lack of anything else at the time I guess. But I set both frames to show for 3 seconds each, so you should see the image 'flip' every now and then.
Once I saved my work, I was able to download the .ico file to my desktop, and then copy it over to my blog.
Does not work on every platform or browser
I'm able to do this quite easily since I control all aspects of my site, however some platforms like Blogger.com do not provide an easy way to include a favicon on your site. It is possible, but not without getting into some HTML editing and potentially causing some damage to your blog. For that reason, I won't go into any details of how to install it beyond pointing your nose to favicon.cc web site for information to that regard.
If you feel adventurous though, by all means play around with your template, but make sure you make a backup of the text you will be modifying!
What system are you on, and are you able to define a favicon with ease, or is there some HTML dredging involved? I suspect most allow you to add one by modifying the template or site headers with HTML, but there may be some that provide an interface for this specific web site feature.
