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favicon.ico

Graphics Skills Suck... Free Place to have one done?

         

Oaf357

1:39 am on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'm tired of having the notorious favicon.ico errors in my error_log is there a place I could have one made for free?

It's for a personal site.

korkus2000

1:50 am on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



You can download a free icon creator from the web like download.com. I don't know of a service that creates them, but maybe someone here does.

Oaf357

2:01 am on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



One could only be so lucky.

TomWaits

2:37 am on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



favicon.com

Oaf357

2:54 am on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Yea. That would be nice if it were free.

martinibuster

4:45 pm on May 4, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Hi TW,
That's a cool tool. I was just fooling around with it and discovered that there's some simple prep work needed in order to create an icon from a regular (non .ico) graphic.

I had to open a file in Photoshop.

Select Image>Mode>Indexed Color

Reduce the image size to 32x32 (or 16x16)

Save as a .bmp file.

Then open the gold editor and Import .bmp file and there you go, instant icon. Good stuff.

mivox

7:00 pm on May 5, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Don't know of any professionals that are going to create a custom icon for free... Lots of icon editing programs, a few free ones, but no free icon artists. (And even if there were, you get what you pay for ;) )

korkus2000

7:17 pm on May 5, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Here is a juicy tip for everyone who doesn't like creating icons. Get an icon tool that will take screen captures. I use microangelo. It costs money, but has a free trial. Now go into your graphics program. Open your soon to be icon picture. Zoom out to the size of an icon. Photoshop can make a great looking smooth preview of the picture at that size that you won't get changing the image size. Do the screen capture and touch up to your liking. You now have a slick looking icon. :)

PeterHo

6:24 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



It doesn't work for me, but I'm using a free host so that maybe why?

mivox

6:32 pm on May 6, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Well, I know Yahoo Stores overrides user favicons with their red "Y" icon... I don't doubt a free host would be happy to override your icon for the sake of their own branding.

PeterHo

12:09 pm on May 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



But isn't it strange. If they let you have your homepage on their server, then I'm free to have whatever (almost) I want on my site? And that should include favicon IMO.

universalis

2:00 pm on May 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Include this in the
<head>
section of your page:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="/path_to_file/favicon.ico">

This should help. Bear in mind that IE usually only displays the favicon once bookmarked.

mivox

7:11 pm on May 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



We did that with the Yahoo Stores site. It just didn't work... so it might not work on a free server either, though it's worth a shot.

Remember: If you are getting anything free online, they are using your content for their own purposes, which usually involves serving paid advertising on your site. The more people know about their service, the more people will build sites there, the more sites they'll have to run paid ads on. So, if your site becomes popular, it's in their best interest to have THEIR logo next to all the bookmarks for your site, because it's free advertising for their service.

PeterHo

7:48 pm on May 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I've tried <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="/path_to_file/favicon.ico"> without any results.

mivox,
True, but Brinkster for example doesn't force you to have their banners or ads on your site. What are they making their profits? On my url that includes brinkster.com?

mivox

7:52 pm on May 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



What are they making their profits?

No idea. :)

killroy

4:31 pm on Jun 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



If you're adding a favicon after another one is already in place you gotta be sneaky. They darn things stick like honey. you gotta at least clear all caches, restart your comp and even try a different browser that hasnT' cached your old one yet. try opening the icon directly "www.domain.com/path_to_icon/favicon.ic" and press F5 for refresh a few times for good measure.

I know I've lost some hair over gettig na darn icon to refresh after I chenged it. You'll have to persistent, and perhaps check it form an internet cafe or so that's never before been used to visit a yahoo site.

I'm telling you these things are VERY sticky, so you might have replaced the icon alright, jsut won't be able to se it on a computer that already cached the other one (not that favicons are not in the same cache as normal files)

SN