What is a favicon? A favicon is a small image (usually 16×16) that is shown on the address bar, Tab bar and the bookmark menu when you load up your site. It gives a good style to your website.

Example of favicon:

Usually, on any regular html website, you just drop your favicon on the folder of your website, but when it comes to Elgg, sometimes you would have to do some other things to make the favicon appears on the browser. In this guide I will show you how to make your favicon appear on any web browser.

First, we create a file called favicon.ico with the image that you want to show up on the browser. That image has to be 16×16. If you like to, you can this favicon generator: Degraeve

For the purpose of this guide, I will use this image:

favicon generated

Now, copy the favicon.ico file onto your Elgg folder in your server.

After that, go to YourElggFolder/views/default/page_elements. Open the file header.php inside that folder. Locate this code:

Under that code, put this:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”http://yourdomain.com/favicon.ico”>

(Where “yourdomain.com” is the address of your domain)

Do not forget to put the full path/domain name pointing to where your favicon is.

Now, save it, and refresh your website and you are done.

Notes: Some plugins have their own header.php and will override your changes. If that happens, open the header.php of that plugin and follow the same steps in this guide.

For more info about Elgg hosting solutions please visit Arvixe-Elgg Hosting

Happy Hosting!

Rodolfo Hernandez