The Short Version

1. Choose a photo or drawing

2. Go here and let the website create the favicon

3. Save the zip file that they give you to your computer

4. Upload the .favicon file to a web page

5. Put a line of code on your web or blog that looks like this, putting the code inside brackets like these < >

link href='http://www.crazyshortcuts.com/links/favicon.ico' rel='shortcut icon'/

[and place it right after the code in these brackets < > that has the word 'head' in them. I can't type the exact thing here because it disappears.

6. Refresh your page so that it reloads and shows you the image in your URL address bar.

Long Version

1. Choose a photo or drawing that is representative of your web or blog, or you can create a text image in Paint or other similar software. Be aware that the image or photo is going to shrink tremendously and that small or even medium details are going to get lost.

For the first image that you see on this lens I used a small cropped section of a digital photo that I had on my computer. I used photo editing software to crop the photo and to reduce it so that I would see the right amount of detail when it became as small as a favicon and not just be a square blur. On the other image that you see in the top of this section [the SR for my daughter Sarah's blog] I used the program Paint to create a text image with the purple background. The actual Paint picture had the 2 letters with a font size of 200 (huge!) but it was just the 2 letters and they shrunk down quite well for her favicon, don't you think? Sarah's initials are SR and she loves purple, so that was my inspiration.

2. Go here and let the website create the favicon. Now this is just plain old cool! They create the favicon for you and let you download it all for free! How nice is that!

3. Save the zip file that they give you to your computer and open it up to see the favicon file and be sure that it looks the way that you wanted it to look.

4. Upload the .favicon file to a web page. Now this might get tricky if you only have a blog and not a website or webpage. If you have your own website, it's easy to just upload the file to your web (it doesn't have to show up or be visible on your website, it just needs to live there). So basically, you need a place to tuck the file in, for your website or blog to "call" it from. I tucked mine into my web and I use it for both my website and my blog. If you have an internet service provider you are often given a small amount of personal web space with the account and you may be able to access this for a favicon for your blog. If you don't have a website I don't have a solution for you right now ~ I am hoping someone will jump in with a comment or advice on how to accomplish an upload that serves just a blog. Google Blogger, Google WebMaker and Flickr won't let you upload the file type that is the favicon (it is a .ico file). So, if you have a solution would you email me or post it as a comment to this lens?

5. Put a line of code on your web or blog that looks like this, putting the code inside brackets like these < >

link href='http://www.crazyshortcuts.com/links/favicon.ico' rel='shortcut icon'/

[and place it right after the code in these brackets < > that has the word 'head' in them. I can't type the exact thing here because it disappears.

6. Refresh your page so that it reloads and shows you the image in your URL address bar.

Credits

Kathy Mack at Pink Chalk Studios is the person who inspired and got me started on making a favicon

Where would we be without These Guys who provide the tool to create the favicon!!

THANK YOU!">