Creating a Favicon for your YWAM Website

In order to make your YWAM website more attractive (and standards compliant), you should design and build a favicon.ico icon. The favicon.ico format is generally made up of one 16x16 pixel image, saved in the Microsoft Icon format. However, the .ico format supports multiple images allowing you to create images in several different resolutions and color depths. It is good practice to include at least 16x16 and a 32x32 pixel images, both of which are used in most web browsers. In trying to design and build a favicon.ico icon for this and other YWAM websites that I maintain, I found the process not quite as straightforward as I expected. You can't simply create an image and call it favicon.ico. I found several useful tools for creating your favicon online:

• Favicon.cc allows you to create your icon using your mouse, or by uploading your image.
• DynamicDrive.com allows you to create your icon in 16x16, 32x32, and 48x48 pixels all at once.

I ended up using Adobe Fireworks and a free plugin by John Dunning to create my favicon.ico icon.

After finishing my own icon however, I found an article called Creating a multi-resolution favicon including transparency with the GIMP which explains what I believe to be the best method for creating your favicon.ico icon using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).  I plan to use this method for all my future favicon.ico needs.