Change Your Favicon

I spend a fair bit of time every day looking at various Drupal based sites, often of people who have posted on drupal.org, and it still amazes me how many of them haven't changed their favicon.

For those that don't know, a favicon (short for favorite icon) is the little 16px x 16px icon which appears in the address bar of your web browser just before the actual address, and also in bookmark lists and on tabs. It's really quick to make one, and there are many great tutorials on the web. I'd recommend you check out this tutorial on Photoshop Support for some guidance, as it's both clear and concise.

Now you might not think this is a big deal. After all, it's only a little icon right? Well, perhaps. But I think that there are two good reasons for getting your favicon sorted:

  • 1. It just looks more professional. And as I've already said on this blog, and will continue to say, like it or not people are going to judge you and your product based upon their impression of your website.
  • 2. The thing you have to remember with Drupal themes is that they'll often have a default favicon setup which, ordinarily, will be the Druplicon. So, this means that if you don't change the favicon in your theme, your site will have the little Druplicon up there in the address bar - not terrible admittedly, but not professional either.

Ultimately, I definitely reckon it's worth taking a few minutes to change your favicon, and if you come across any Drupal sites which have forgotten to do so why not drop them a quick e-mail to let them know.

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Posted by Laurence @ 07:28PM on May 31st 2007
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9 comments

1
ReneJune 1st 2007 @ 12:19AM

Really good tip. Your readers might be interested in Converticon: http://converticon.com, a great online tool that does a great job of converting favicons from png files.

2
LaurenceJune 2nd 2007 @ 11:14AM

Thanks for the suggestion Rene, I'll check that out myself.

3
Jon D>May 18th 2008 @ 05:09AM

Thank you Rene. I agree with you 100% a favicon is important, and maybe it is obvious to others but I'm very new to Drupal and I had a heck of a time figuring out how to change from the default one, to one that I know works on other sites.

I was going about it in the wrong way, So I thought I'd add a note here in case others find your site like I did from a 'favicon.ico + drupal' google search...

After testing this to be true, I heard on IRC #drupal that you do not need to have .ico image. It can be .bmp or (in my case) .png. Mine is 16x16 pixels, but it's in the common png format.

Try this:

Administer > Themes > Configure (your theme) > (scroll down to) Shortcut icon settings. Upload your image.

4
JoE P.March 30th 2009 @ 08:35PM

This is so useful to me.
I'd like the favicon to be absolutely mine because it's show my identity.
Rene and Jon D, thank you very much.

5
GuestApril 27th 2009 @ 03:45AM

Hi all, I tried and it shows up in Firefox but not in IE7, anyone knows why?
Thanks in advance

Lim

6
GuestMay 6th 2009 @ 01:12PM

Hi all!
i tried several times to change the default drupal favi and replace with mine but never shows up..
tried files ico or png but firefox still shows the default ico..
what wrong am I doing??? silly q but ...

7
chickpeaNovember 3rd 2009 @ 09:52PM

I agree, it amazes me how many people haven't bothered changing their favicon.. its the first thing I did. In the themes configure page I unchecked the 'Use the default shortcut icon' and entered the path for my new icon. Then I had to clear browser cache for the new icon to show.

8
NeoProxyApril 13th 2010 @ 04:31AM

While the information is generally good. You should be more specific on how to change the Drupal favicon, since that is the topic of this post. Drupal doesn't keep the favicon in the standard location and for Drupal 6, it is located in /misc directory. It is also notable that you can have your favicon in several sizes 16 x 16, 32 x 32, or 64 x 64.

9
SairahMay 2nd 2010 @ 08:31PM

I agree that this is something I always glance at when I visit a site. I also agree with NeoProxy that a little more information would have been helpful. I changed the favicon in the /misc directory, to make it permanent rather than the helpful method that Jon D suggested.

Could you edit this entry and add the information from both of those comments in? If I hadn't thought to read through the comments, I would have been frustrated for a very long time! =D

Thanks, and keep up the great work!