Church Website Extras – Favorite Icon

Save Your Church Money Blog

Save Your Church Money Favicon howto example Ever wonder how to make your own favorite icon?  What is that?  Look up on the tab at the top of your browser, see how SaveYourchurchMoney.com has a neat little cross in the top?  If you have been working to build a better church website you may have wondered, “How do they do that?”  It really is pretty simple and dependingon the software you use to maintain your church website it should be just a matter of replacing a  default favicon.ico file.

Creating a favicon.ico for your website

Your icon is simply a 16×16 pixel image ( this is a 16x16 size black box for a size perspective of a favicon  ) file encoded to a .ico.  You can create your own image file in PhotoShop or another art program and upload it for quick conversion at multiple sites online, or you can just free hand it and download your first .ico file in a few minutes of clicking online.

For me, one of the easiest ways is to use an online FavIcon generator.  I use FaveIcon.cc for some of mine and it proves to be simple when I need something right then.   Another one is Favicon Editor and it uses a 16×16 grid and is very basic.  there are some advanced online sites (Dynamic Drive – Favicon Generator) as well that allow you to merge multiple images and icon sizes (16×16, 32×32, and 48×48,) into the same image.

For most it will be easy to just go online is it easy to just draw in the 16×16 square using colors to achieve your desired favicon image.  Start with a simple one and you can spend hours tweaking it to get that icon just right for your site.

blank canvas size of a 16x16 for a blank favicon

Once you have that favicon.ico file then upload it to your website and include a simple link tag in your HTML header (or give it to your web guy and make him/her do it for you).  Then just like that you will have your own custom icon on the tab for visitors to your church!

<LINK REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico” />

favicon cross example for Save Your Church Money

 

 Online Icon generator Programs

FavIcon.cc
Favicon Generator
Dynamic Drive – Favicon Generator
You can Google “online favicon generator” and get a bunch of places online

Retail Art Programs

Photoshop CS5 $699.00
Photoshop Elements $75
Corel Draw X5 $50

Open Source Art Programs

Gimp 2.6 $Free or donation
Photoscape $ Free or donation

Online Art Programs

Online Image Editor www.online-image-editor.com
Pixlr http://pixlr.com/
Just Google “Online image editor” and you can get a bunch to choose from!