Last week I showed you how I learned to customize the sidebar inside the Free Website Template by Land Surveyors United.  Now I am going to show you how to add a custom favicon to your site.

But First, What is a favicon?

According to Wikipedia, a favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is a 16x16 pixel square icon associated with a particular website or webpage.  The favicon is often displayed in your browser's address bar, bookmarks/favorites list, tabs and even desktop shortcuts to web pages.  For example:

Creating Favicons

Favicons can be created based on most any image, but not all images will look good as a favicon.  There are a variety of tools available for creating these images, including the following free online services.  From my experience, all of these services work equally well, though some have more features and capabilities than others:

• http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/
• http://www.favicon.cc/
• http://www.faviconblog.com/favicongenerator1/script/index.php
  
  

Adding a Custom Favicon

The following steps are all that is required to take advantage of this new capability:

• Navigate to the Attachment management section of your site (More Actions >> Manage Site >> Attachments)
• Click Upload
• Click Browse and select your favicon.ico file
  • Your favicon file must be named "favicon.ico"
  • The apple-touch-icon.png file is not currently compatible as a favicon for Google Sites.
• Choose the option to Upload attachment to / (top-level)
• Click Upload