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How to Create a Favicon

June 18, 2009 By Regina Fried Leave a Comment

When you create a website, one of the things you should do before launching your site is create a favicon. A favicon is an icon that appears next to a URL in the address bar of a web browser.

To create your own favicon, follow these steps:

  1. Create the image you would like to use as your favicon using a graphics program such as Photoshop. If you don’t own a graphics program, you can use a free one such as GIMP. Because a favicon is tiny (only 16 pixels x 16 pixels), it’s important to keep the design simple.
  2. Save your design as a gif, jpeg, png, or bmp.
  3. Upload your image to one of the many favicon generators available on the Internet. I use the favicon generator at Dynamic Drive. Download the newly created favicon and make sure it is named “favicon.ico”.
  4. Upload your favicon to your website. It should be placed in the root directory of your website (do not place the favicon in an images folder).
  5. For HTML pages, place this code in the head section of each web page: <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=/favicon.ico”> — if you are using WordPress, you can find instructions on editing your page header here.

That’s all there is to it!

Sometimes you can’t see your favicon even though you’ve followed all the correct steps. If so, empty your browser cache and then refresh your page. Your favicon should appear.

Filed Under: All Things Web, WordPress Tagged With: DIY, free

Using WordPress for E-Commerce

June 12, 2009 By Regina Fried 2 Comments

In my post 8 Common Questions About Using WordPress, I wrote that you can use WordPress for e-commerce, but “if the primary purpose of your website is to sell products, you may need an e-commerce solution.” Based on some questions a reader asked, I feel the need to clarify this.

You can use WordPress for e-commerce, but WordPress is not an out-of-the-box e-commerce solution. You need a plugin to make it work. If you want to use WordPress for an online store, you should ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Am I the type of person willing to learn new skills — in particular am I willing to read documentation and troubleshoot problems and search forums to find the answers I might need to get a WordPress e-commerce plugin to work? In other words, am I a DIYer? For the most part, WordPress plugins are free and some are better supported than others. In my forays into the WordPress plugin universe I’ve read plenty of comments from frustrated users who could not get answers to questions they had about various e-commerce plugins. If you do not want to be one of those users, investigate your options carefully because plugin support is extremely important.
  2. How big will my store be? How many products and/or services will I be selling? Plan for the future, not for the present. Does the e-commerce plugin you’re considering have the ability to handle a large inventory?
  3. Does the e-commerce plugin offer everything my store needs? What about a payment gateway and security?
  4. Do I want a site that integrates several functions — a blog, some pages, the ability to build an online community, and an online store — or do I just want a store?
  5. Is cost an issue? Silly question, I know — of course, it is. Okay, then how much of an issue? Using WordPress for e-commerce is usually less expensive than using an e-commerce solution.

If your answers to these questions reveal you to be a “do-it-yourselfer” who wants to create a site that is more than just a store, and who does not want to spend a lot of money getting a online store off the ground, then using WordPress for e-commerce may be for you.

But if your answers to these questions reveal you to be someone who just wants to sell products, wants the site up quickly, and doesn’t want to worry about how it all works, just wants it to work, then you would probably be more comfortable with an e-commerce solution. Costs for e-commerce solutions vary, but you should be able to find one that suits your budget.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: DIY, e-commerce

Stolen Websites: How to Protect Your Site

June 4, 2009 By Regina Fried Leave a Comment

You’ve worked hard to create your website. Now it’s available for all the world to see. Unfortunately, some people will also believe it’s available to steal. Here are some ways to protect yourself against website theft.

  1. Copyscape: use Copyscape to search for copies of your web content. If you discover someone is using your work and passing it off as their own, dive into Copyscape’s list of resources and suggestions for what to do if you discover you’ve been plagirized. Place a Copyscape banner on your website pages. This does not protect your work, but it does discourage would-be thieves.
  2. Place a copyright notice at the end of each blog posting: “Copyright [year] [your name]. All Rights Reserved. Look at the end of this posting, and you’ll see my copyright.
  3. The folks at WordPress suggest using a more-detailed copyright notice on your blog, stating what uses you will and won’t allow. I’ve placed this copyright in my sidebar. If you do not want excerpts of your work used, you can modify the notice to remove that language. This article also includes some other great ideas for protecting your work and gives suggestions on what to do if your work has been stolen.
  4. There are good suggestions in an article at Freelance Switch, including a novel use of Google Alerts: “… choose one or more phrases that are relatively unique to your work, place them in quotes and set up a Google Alert to notify you automatically when a match is found.”
  5. Use watermarks on your images. Other suggestions can be found on this posting from Web Resources Depot.

While there are no guarantees that your work won’t be stolen, taking some, or all, of these steps should help. And should the worst occur, you can follow these steps to recover your website property.

Copyright 2010 Regina Fried. All Rights Reserved.

Filed Under: All Things Web, WordPress, Writing Tagged With: blog, Google, Images, web content