|
||||
How to add an icon to your domain addressAdding an Icon to your URL can be the single most important design element of your site. The icon that many web sites display in the browser address bar to left of ‘http://’ and in bookmarks next to your page name, makes your site stand out in the crowd. It brands it, promoting your site and increasing traffic. This is important if you are generating revenue on your site with advertising or services, but it’s just as desirable for personal websites.
If no one ever sees your personal site, it may feel kind of like talking to yourself. Good news! Adding a URL icon is pretty easy to do!There’s no doubt about it. Aside from branding your site, it just looks cool Whether seasoned, or newbie, building a great web site requires many hours spent in development. Don’t let that common testimonial fool you, you know the one - “it was so easy. Two hours later I had a complete web site up and running”. Yup. Nice boilerplate. Take your time, that’s half the fun! Take a look at the one next to the TeamTuxedo address in the address bar. It’s a little penguin. Tux the Linux mascot to be more precise. By now in your website experience you are probably longing for an address icon of your own. I developed icon envy after installing Joomla! on another domain. I noticed that the Joomla! icon appears in the address bar by default, and there isn’t any clear information (that I found) on how to change that. When in doubt google So here’s how you do it. first things first. You need an icon. Icons are 16X16 pixels in size, and you can either create them yourself in GIMP or Photoshop, or use this great utility that does it for you. This web utility lets you browse your hard drive for a picture and then takes that picture converting it to the proper dimensions. It will be packaged in a zip file. Just download it and keep it handy. The filename of the Icon you see in the browser is favicon.ico and many times just uploading it to your main (root) directory with an FTP program is enough to get the graphic associated with your site address. If you don’t know how to use an FTP program, many hosting companies have simple ways of letting you put files into your hosting account. Having said that, it’s really a good idea to learn how to use an FTP program, and again, your hosting company may be of assistance. The first thing that many browsers do when loading a web page is look to see if favicon.ico is in the root directory. If so, no worries, they just load it into the address bar automatically. Sometimes, your main page will be in a place besides the root directory, it will have an unexpected name, or it will be part of another program like WordPress. Note that some standard names of the main web page are welcome.html, index.html, or index.php. If it’s index.php, it’s a bit more complex, but not impossible. I’ll tell you how to do it with WordPress and Joomla! in the end of this tutorial. if your main web page is in another directory, put the favicon.ico file in that directory, then add the following line to your main page, within the header portion. You can add the line with a plain old text editor like note pad. <link rel=“shortcut icon” href=“favicon.ico” > This assumes that favicon.ico is in the same directory as the main web page. Now clear the cache. For instance, in Firefox, click on edit->preferences>privacy->clear private data. Now reload the page, and the icon should show up. To Review:
If these steps don’t work - continue:
I can tell you that WordPress and Joomla require a slightly different set of instructions. In WordPress 2.5 and later, this is the easiest way to do it:
In Joomla! 1.5 and greater:
I hope that I have been able to help you get your own URL icon. I love mine! Denigris |
||||
|
Copyright © 2010 TeamTuxedo - All Rights Reserved |
||||
