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johnnada



Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 1:24 pm    Post subject: Favicons Reply with quote

Hi John,

Favicons are a small 16x16 gif file that can be displayed next to the url in the browser bar of a surfer (Like your little lighthouse in the browser bar) and are also saved next to the site name in a bookmark list when a site is bookmarked - instead of the default bookmark icons)
They help a persons eye find your url in a long list of bookmarks and are actually a pretty good little marketing tool since very few people take advantage of them.

The gif needs to be uploaded to the root directory of a website and then browsers pick up on it and display it and save it automagically as long as it's named favicon.ico

Anyway, an upload to my main directory does not produce the desired result although the file is named correctly and exists.

As I said in my email, I question your assertion that my main directory is actually the root. It is -really- the WWW or "public_html" directory with a true root under it that we can't access, isn't it? Is that why the favicon isn't working?

Can you tell us how to get blog harbor blogs to display and use favicons correctly?
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john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 2:24 pm    Post subject: Re: Favicons Reply with quote

That is an excellent description of Favicons. They can now actually be larger than 16x16 and modern browsers will scale appropriately, and they can also be other formats than GIF; PNG has become popular for favicons.

johnnada wrote:
The gif needs to be uploaded to the root directory of a website and then browsers pick up on it and display it and save it automagically as long as it's named favicon.ico


The icon can actually be located anywhere, though IE does try to do a trick when saving its favorites by looking for a file named favicon.ico at the top level (sometimes referred to as the root level) of the web path. On our demo weblog for example we place it inside an images directory and not in the root directory just as a matter of personal preference.

Once you have uploaded the icon file to your weblog, you'll need to
add code to display it in the HEAD area of your HTML. They key is to add code like this to your page:

Code:
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="/favicon.ico">


where the href shows the link to the icon. In this case, we have the
leading slash (means go to the root level of this website) and then the
icon file name.

Adding this code to the HEAD of your HTML document is accomplished by accessing Settings & Security > General in the control panel. Look for the section labeled Additional <HEAD> Content and enter the code above. Click Save Settings. Now your blog will show your Favicon.

johnnada wrote:
As I said in my email, I question your assertion that my main directory is actually the root. It is -really- the WWW or "public_html" directory with a true root under it that we can't access, isn't it? Is that why the favicon isn't working?


No, that's not eaxctly correct. A browser doesn't (necessarily) know anything about the underlying directory structure on a web server. The only thing it knows about is the path on the web site itself. So as long as the code above references the correct file along the path of the website, everything will work fine.
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johnnada



Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Posts: 4

PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 11:33 pm    Post subject: Thanks Reply with quote

John, thank you for your help.

I wanted to update this post in case anyone tries this and experiences the same problem I had.

My Ibook G4 refused to display the favicon in any browser bar until I renamed the .ico file to a .gif file.

The .ico file displayed nicely on a windows machine, and seems to have displayed OK on John's Mac.

Not sure, but changing to .gif fixed it for me, thought I'd mention it.

Thanks much!
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