A favicon, a portmanteau of "favorite" and "icon", is a small yet significant part of every website. It's the icon that represents your site in browser tabs, browsing history, panels, and other places. Adding a favicon to your website is an easy process that can significantly improve user experience and your site's recognizability. In this article, we'll show you how to do it.
Preparing Your Favicon
Before you start, you'll need an icon. The ideal size for a favicon is 16x16 or 32x32 pixels. You can create a favicon in any graphic editor that allows you to save images in the .ico format, which is the standard format for these icons. Alternatively, you can use online favicon generators to create or convert your icon to the required format.
Inserting Your Favicon Into Your Website
Once your icon is ready, it's time to add it to your website. This is done by inserting HTML code into the head (<head>) of your web pages. Here's a basic example of the code you might use:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/favicon.png">
In this example, replace favicon.png with the path to your favicon. If you created your favicon in the .ico format, your link tag should look like this:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
Supporting Various Devices and Browsers
Modern websites often use multiple favicon sizes for different devices and browsers. You can add multiple links to different sizes of icons in the head section of your site to accommodate this. For example:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="/favicon-32x32.png">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="/favicon-16x16.png">
<link rel="manifest" href="/site.webmanifest">
This approach ensures that your website will have the right icon on all devices and in various browsers.
Adding a favicon to your website is a simple step that can make a significant contribution to better user experience and a more professional appearance of your site. Follow the steps mentioned above and make sure your favicon is visible on all devices and in all browsers. With a bit of creativity and technical know-how, you can easily distinguish your website from the competition.
