Favicons, Links, & Link Names

As a result of getting rid of the subtitle "Defensor Fidei," I have a favor to ask of the folks who are linking me on their blogs or web pages. I’d be much obliged to y’all if you would consider changing the links to say "Jimmy Akin" or "JimmyAkin.Org" rather than "Defensor Fidei."

(Also, I’d be much obliged if folks who aren’t currently linking me would consider doing so. If you appreciate what I’m doing here, please consider sharing it with others via a link.)

In exchange for your trouble, lemme pass on a bit of weblore that you may find useful:

Up in your address bar or (if you have me bookmarked) next to your bookmark to the blog or (if you’re using tabbed browsing in a browswer like Mozilla) next to the tab for this page, you may see a little picture of me that looks like this:

That’s been there for a while, but not everyone has been seeing it, so one of the changes I made this weekend was to make it more accessible again.

In the past, a number of folks have written me about it and said (a) that they find it cute and (b) that they’d like to know how to do it for their own sites.

No prob!

This image is called a favicon (short for "favorites icon"). Here’s how to create one for your own site (either a picture of you or based on your site’s logo or simply an image that you find interesting), in three easy steps:

1. Create a 16×16 pixel icon. I used the program Easy Icon Maker for doing this, though lots of programs will make icons (.ico files) (HERE, FOR EXAMPLE, IS A FREE PICTURE-TO-FAVICON CONVERTER, THOUGH I HAVEN’T USED IT). Make sure that the name of your icon is favicon.ico. The name is important for how some browsers will handle it.
2. Upload the icon to the root directory of your blog or home page.
3. Then, in the headers of your web page or the headers of your blog template, include the line:

<link rel="shortcut icon"

href="http://WHEREVER_YOUR_ROOT_DIRECTORY_IS/favicon.ico">

And you’re all set!

Now, I should warn you that different browsers handle favicons differently, and they may not all instantly grab it. Internet Explorer, for example, often does not grab the favicon unless you delete existing bookmarks to the site and re-bookmark it. So you may have to do some jiggering (deleting bookmarks, clearing cashes, restarting browsers, restarting the computer) to get it to show up on your own system after you’ve installed it on the site. (I had to.)

A good way to verify that it’s there without all this effort is to call someone who you know doesn’t visit your site and ask him to visit it and bookmark you. If he see’s the favicon, it’s there, even though it may not show up on your system for a while.

There are also other ways to implement this kind of icon, but that’s the basic way.

MORE INFO HERE.

Hope that’s a satisfactory compensation for other webmasters and bloggers (at least for us non-professionals) to consider linking or link-editing JimmyAkin.Org. 🙂

Thanks, folks!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin