Change your blog icon in blogger to look more professional

The below post is one of the many awesome tips found in the exclusive BlogStar Community. Full access to the BlogStar Community is just one of the great things you get with a BlogFrog premium membership. If you love blogging, be sure to check it out.

Do you know what your "blog icon" is? Look up at your browser address bar right now. Do you see the miniature version of my picture? That's my blog icon (known in geek speak as a "favicon"). When someone browses to your blog, your blog icon appears next to your address in their browser. It also appears when your friends bookmark your blog. If you go to any big blog you will notice that they have a customized blog icon.

Now go to your blog and check out the blog icon. Is it the boring default Blogger icon? Here's how to change it on Blogger so you can look more professional:

First, you need a small picture. Take the image you want to use, then resize it to 32 x 32 pixels and save it as a PNG or GIF. You can do this resizing and saving on Picnik or Photobucket. Next, upload your new image to Photobucket, Flickr, Picasa or any other image hosting service. After you have uploaded it, you need to grab the "URL". The URL is the "web address" of your image. You can get the URL by viewing the details of your uploaded image. In Photobucket, if you click on the picture, it will show you the "direct url". Find the URL and press CTRL+C to copy it into your computer.

Next, edit your template and scroll down to (or search for) the tag . Insert the following HTML just BEFORE the </head> tag:

<link href='http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww346/theblogfrog/favicon.png' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/png'/>

Next, replace the http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/ww346/theblogfrog/favicon.png part with the URL of your image. You can do this by highlighting it and pressing "CTRL+V" to paste in the URL of your image.

Save your template and reload your blog. Sometimes it takes awhile for browsers to recognize it, especially Internet explorer. Did it work?

If you like tips like this, be sure to check out the BlogStar Community then upgrade your BlogFrog account to get full access.