Adding a favicon to your WordPress blog is a simple yet powerful step for your site’s branding. A favicon is a small image that shows up next to your website’s title in browser tabs, bookmarks, and more.
The problem is that many new bloggers overlook this detail or think it’s too technical to handle. On the other hand, missing a favicon can make it harder for your audience to identify your site at a glance, which may reduce return visits or engagement.
At WPBeginner, one reason we use a favicon is to help our readers quickly recognize our site among their open tabs and bookmarks. This detail also helps reinforce our brand and ensure a more professional online presence.
Luckily, adding a favicon to your WordPress blog doesn’t have to be complicated. In this guide, we’ll cover easy methods to set up your site icon and make your blog stand out.
Why Should You Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Blog?
A favicon is essential to add to your WordPress blog because it helps users identify your website quickly and strengthen your brand identity. From that small icon, site visitors can easily recognize your blog.
Here’s what a favicon looks like in a web browser:
Another purpose of a WordPress favicon is to improve user experience. When multiple tabs are open, users can look at the favicons to know which website they are on and switch to the one they want.
If users add a shortcut icon or bookmark to your blog on their mobile devices, then the favicon will appear as an app icon on their home screen. This makes it easy for them to access your website with just a simple tap.
Favicons can also help with WordPress search engine optimization (SEO). If you pay attention to the pages in the search results, they usually feature the site’s favicon before the page’s meta title. This can make your website look legitimate and trustworthy.
How to Create a Favicon for Your WordPress Blog
First, let’s learn how to create a good favicon for your blog.
The ideal WordPress favicon size is a square image of up to 512 pixels in both width and height. The favicon image format can be ICO, JPEG, PNG, or GIF.
SVG is also a common format for favicons, but they’re not acceptable by WordPress by default. That said, you can configure WordPress to allow adding SVG files.
If you run a business blog, then you can use your brand logo as your favicon icon. If you don’t have one yet, you can check out our beginner’s guide on how to create a logo for your website.
If you have a logo ready but want to make the background transparent, then you can use Photoshop or a free image editing tool with an automatic background remover. Just make sure the file format is PNG to keep the transparency in the favicon.
Another option you can use is a free favicon generator like Favicon.io. This tool lets you customize a favicon from scratch and download the files in PNG and ICO format.
With that in mind, here’s how to easily add a favicon to your WordPress blog. We will cover 4 methods, and you can click the links below to skip to the method you want to use:
Ready? Let’s get started.
Method 1: Adding a Favicon Using the WordPress Customizer
This is the easiest method to change a favicon in WordPress. All you need to do is upload your favicon image to the WordPress Customizer, and the rest will be taken care of for you.
The first step is to access the WordPress Customizer. If you use a classic theme, then you can navigate to Appearance » Customize to do this.
If you are using a block theme and can’t find the Customizer, then check out our guide on how to fix the missing Theme Customizer in WordPress admin.
Next, let’s click on the ‘Site Identity’ tab in the left sidebar.
Here, you will see options to customize your ‘Site Logo,’ ‘Site Title,’ ‘Tagline,’ and ‘Site Icon.’
If you want to add a site’s favicon, you’ll need to scroll down to the ‘Site Icon’ section and click ‘Select site icon.’
The WordPress Media Library will now appear. You can either select an existing image or upload a new custom favicon from your computer.
In this example, we will use WPBeginner’s logo as the WordPress site icon.
After choosing an image, click the ‘Select’ button in the bottom right corner of the window.
If the favicon is bigger than the recommended size, then WordPress will allow you to crop it. If it exactly matches the recommended size, then you can just leave it as it is.
Once the image looks good, just click ‘Crop image.’
After that, you will be returned to the WordPress Customizer. Here, you can finish your favicon setup by clicking the ‘Publish’ button in the left sidebar.
That’s it! Now that you’ve uploaded your favicon, you can visit your WordPress website to see if the image is already live.
Method 2: Adding a Favicon Using the WordPress Full Site Editor
If you are using a block theme and want to add your brand logo as both a part of your website header and a site icon, then this method is for you.
For this, you need to go to Appearance » Editor from the WordPress admin panel.
On this page, you will find several menus to customize your website, including ‘Navigation’ and ‘Styles.’
For this tutorial, you will need to click on ‘Patterns’ to access your website header block pattern.
Upon scrolling down, you will see several template parts: ‘Header,’ ‘Footer,’ and ‘General.’
Just click on the ‘Header’ template to add your favicon there.
Next, you will see a pencil button next to the Header text.
Go ahead and click on it so that you can edit the pattern and insert your WordPress favicon.
You are now inside the WordPress full-site editing experience.
From here, you can click the add block ‘+’ button and search for the ‘Site Logo’ block. This is where you will add the image that will become your WordPress favicon.
Feel free to drag and drop the block to where you want it in your header. In this example, we’ve placed it next to the website title.
The next thing you will do is click the upload icon in the ‘Site Logo’ block.
As with the previous method, you can choose an existing image or upload a new one from the WordPress Media Library.
After that, you need to navigate to the Block settings sidebar on the right side of the page. Just turn on the ‘Use as site icon’ setting to add the logo as a favicon.
Finally, you can hit the ‘Save’ button at the top right corner of the page to publish your favicon.
You will see a warning that the change will affect the entire website. Just make sure the ‘Icon’ box is ticked, and click ‘Save’ again.
Now that you’ve gone through all the steps, you can open your website to confirm that the change was successful.
Method 3: Adding a Favicon Using a WordPress Favicon Plugin
If you prefer using a WordPress favicon plugin, then you can follow this method to use the free Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator plugin.
First, you need to install and activate the plugin. For more details, you can follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, you can head over to Appearance » Favicon in your WordPress dashboard.
After that, simply click the ‘Select from the Media Library’ button to upload a new image or use an existing one.
Note that you will need to use a square picture. The plugin recommends making the site icon size at least 260 pixels in both width and height but no smaller than 70 pixels.
Once you’ve chosen an image, go ahead and hit the ‘Generate favicon’ button.
After this, the plugin will lead you to the RealFaviconGenerator website to edit the favicon.
You can customize various settings, like the background color and how it looks on Google search results pages (SERPs), iOS, Android, macOS Safari, Chrome, and Windows Metro.
In the ‘Favicon Generator Options’ section, you can check the box to see if your website has been using a favicon before. If yes, simply enter a number in the second field to indicate the favicon version you are using.
This way, users who have visited your site before will see the new favicon instead of the old one.
Once everything looks good, all you need to do is click the ‘Generate your Favicons and HTML code’ button to add the favicon to your WordPress site.
Your favicon should now be live. Make sure to keep the WordPress favicon plugin active so that the favicon is always enabled.
Method 4: Adding a Favicon Manually to Your WordPress Blog
Last but not least, you can add a WordPress favicon to your blog by manually editing your theme’s code files.
This is helpful if your Theme Customizer doesn’t have the ‘Site Identity’ section or you use a block theme and want a different favicon image from your site logo.
The easiest and safest way to edit your theme’s code files is with the WPCode plugin.
WPCode is the best code snippets plugin for beginners. With over 1700 ready-made snippets and secure error handling, it allows you to safely insert custom code without breaking your website.
Another great thing about WPCode is that if you update your theme, then you won’t lose your code modifications, including your favicon.
For this guide, you can use the free version of WPCode. However, with the Pro subscription, you get access to features like smart conditional logic and third-party integrations to manage your code more efficiently.
To start, you need to install and activate WPCode. For more information, you can see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
The next thing you need to do is prepare your favicon files. For this, you can use a free favicon generator like Favicon.io.
On the website, you can click ‘Image’ to convert an image file into a zip file and HTML code. Alternatively, you can use the ‘Emoji’ or ‘Text’ option to create a favicon using the emojis and fonts available.
On the next page, you can upload your image. Then, go ahead and click ‘Download’ to save the favicon zip file, which contains your favicon.png and favicon.ico files.
Make sure to keep this web page open as you go through the next steps.
Now, you need to upload the favicon zip file to your site’s root directory. To do this, you can use your WordPress hosting’s file manager.
Alternatively, you can do this through an FTP client like FileZilla. For more details, check out our beginner’s guide on how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress.
Once you have opened your website files via the file manager or FTP, navigate to the root directory.
The WordPress root directory is usually a folder named ‘public’ or ‘public_html,’ and it contains essential WordPress folders like wp-content and wp-admin.
At this point, you can extract and upload all the favicon file content you previously downloaded to the root directory.
If you are using File Manager, then you can click the ‘Upload’ button near the top.
Then, a new tab will appear, asking you to upload the files.
On this page, you can click the ‘Select File’ button and choose all the favicon files.
Now, simply wait for the files to be successfully uploaded.
Once done, you can go back to the file manager tab. You should now see all your favicon files in the root directory, like in the screenshot below:
Now, let’s go back to the WordPress admin panel.
In the left sidebar, you’ll want to navigate to Code Snippets » Header & Footer.
After that, return to the Favicon.io tab from earlier.
Then, you need to copy the HTML code from there. It should have 4 link rel tags in the code.
Next, you have to go back to WordPress and paste the code into the ‘Header’ section of the WPCode page. This will add the code to your website’s header.php file.
In the code, insert your website’s full URL in quotation marks next to all the href attributes, like in the example below. Remember to add http:// or https:// if your site uses an SSL certificate.
Finally, you can click the ‘Save Changes’ button in the top right corner.
And that’s it! Don’t forget to visit your website to see if the favicon change was successful.
Why Is My WordPress Favicon Not Showing?
One reason why your WordPress favicon may not be showing is due to the browser cache. This means your browser is still displaying the old version of your site.
To solve this issue, you need to clear your browser’s cache. If you need help, then you can follow our guide on how to clear the cache in your browser.
It’s also possible that you’re using a CDN service that still stores the old version of your site. In that case, you need to purge the CDN cache to update your website content.
To check if your WordPress site icon has been uploaded, you can open your website in incognito mode or a private browsing window.
If the favicon installation was unsuccessful, then you can try re-uploading the image with a different file name to resolve the issue.
Your WordPress site icon feature may also not be working because of a mixed content error. To solve this problem, check out our guide on how to fix WordPress mixed content errors.
In some cases, you may also discover that your website is displaying your hosting provider’s favicon instead of your own. If this happens, then contacting their support team can help resolve the issue.
We recommend choosing a reputable WordPress hosting service with excellent customer support to address problems like this effectively. You can check out our list of the best WordPress hosting providers to find the best option for your website.
Finally, you may want to check if your WordPress theme has a specific tool for uploading a favicon. This can explain why the methods above do not work for you.
We hope that this article helped you add a favicon to your WordPress site. You may also want to see our expert picks of the best free logo makers to help you look like a pro and our guide on how to easily add icon fonts to your WordPress theme.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Suman Sourabh
I added a Favicon Using the 1st method via the “WordPress Customizer”. It was super easy indeed. But I think we shouldn’t use a plugin for doing these kinds of smaller tasks as having too many plugins can be a challenge to maintain. What do you think?
WPBeginner Support
It depends on the specific plugin and it’s use case. The below article explains our opinion on how many plugins a site should have
https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/how-many-wordpress-plugins-should-you-install-on-your-site/
Admin
Hajjalah
This article was so helpful for me because I was wondering why other websites logos are present in search results while mine wasn’t there. When I used “Method 1: Adding a Favicon Using the WordPress Customizer” Google was the only engine showing up, I also used “Method 3: Adding a Favicon Using a WordPress Favicon Plugin” and then Yandex search started showing up but, Bing search results failed to show my Favicon. I don’t know why?
WPBeginner Support
If you did a search recently after changing your Favicon, the most likely reason would be that the search engine had yet to recrawl your site.
Admin
mohadese esmaeeli
In my opinion, having a favicon can attract the audience’s attention and add a stylish and aesthetic touch to the website in the browser. Perhaps it can capture the viewer’s gaze and be a distinctive feature.
Jiří Vaněk
It’s exactly as you say. A favicon is really about personalization and capturing user attention. When you have multiple tabs open in your browser, you can easily identify a website by its favicon. It’s like a personal stamp for the website, making it easy to remember. Also, when you bookmark a website, it saves with its favicon, which greatly aids in navigating among many bookmarks, especially if they aren’t well organized. Considering how small a favicon is, it’s extremely important for a website in my opinion.
mohadese esmaeeli
Hello. The favicon section of my website is not working. Even when I provide the url in the theme settings, it doesn’t show. I also tried from the site ID part, but it gives an error of not processing the image. Can you please guide me on this?
WPBeginner Support
If you are using the built-in option for your theme then we would first recommend reaching out to your theme’s support as they may have a specific requirement for the favicon image using their tool.
Admin
Jiří Vaněk
The last time I uploaded a favicon to a website, I struggled for a really long time with the icon not showing up on the website. I cleared the browser cache and wordpress itself and it didn’t help. She didn’t show up on her own until a few hours later. If someone is having trouble with it, the cache can be in many places. CDN, on the network element at home, on the server. So sometimes it’s good to just wait a while and not stress right away. Otherwise, the Favicon is a small thing, but it is a great way to customize your own page.
WPBeginner Support
Having a favicon can help with your SEO as well as to help users remember your site but it is not required and the first favicon you set can be changed to a different one later on.
Admin
Peter Iriogbe
Now I see why site owners stick to using Favicon which looks the same as their site logo.
Peter Iriogbe
Is it a must to upload a favicon or does it influence ranking on search?
Jiří Vaněk
Favicon is not necessary and does not affect SEO and search in any way. It is the personalization of the page. A favicon is great in two ways. If someone adds your page to their favorites, they will immediately recognize it by the favicon and do not have to search for a long time. The second great thing is when you have multiple pages open in your browser. You can also recognize the given page immediately by the favicon. So I definitely recommend having it, even if it doesn’t really affect SEO and search itself.
mohadese esmaeeli
Exactly, I agree. I’ve experienced the same issue. Often, when searching, I open various websites, and after an hour, I realize I have many tabs open in the Chrome browser, right in front of my eyes! However, having a favicon helps me quickly locate my desired site among the numerous tabs.
Javi
second alternative worked, thanks
WPBeginner Support
Glad to hear it worked
Admin
Meer Hamza
Is it manadatory to upload favicon at wordpress website in ICO file format.
WPBeginner Support
No, it does not need to be an ico format.
Admin
Meer Hamza
1-Is it ok to just upload site Icon from theme>customize>site Icon. Will it show as favicon?
2-I upload site Icon on wordpress website. Is it necessary to show Favicon at URL website.com/favicon
WPBeginner Support
1. Yes it is fine to upload it from there
2. It is not necessary but it can be helpful for finding the favicon later.
Admin
Alex Perry
Thanks, after 2 hours of searching I finally found it. How to change the site icon…
WPBeginner Support
Glad our guide allowed you to add it instead of needing to search further
Admin
Ben
I think this needs an update. I tried this and there’s no “Site Identity” tab under Appearance > Customize
WPBeginner Support
Your specific theme may have a custom editor or if you are using the block editor you could add the site logo block, set an image, and in the block’s settings have that set as the site’s favicon.
Admin
FAIZ
what a great guide, really it’s very helpful
WPBeginner Support
Happy to hear our guide was helpful
Admin
Max Anderson
What does the WPBeginner favicon represent?
WPBeginner Support
Our blob is a simple design of a face smiling using an exclamation point and parenthesis
Admin
AL
Hi, what to do when Favicon is not showing on chromium-based browser and shows up in Firefox.
WPBeginner Support
You would normally want to clear your site’s cache as well as try setting the favicon again for a common reason.
Admin
John
I’m new to this so would appreciate some guidance with favicon. The website I’m trying to look after needs the favicon changing. Can I load a new image as a favicon that will overwrite the favicon currently on the pages or must i delete the current one then load a new image?
Thanks for any reply
WPBeginner Support
You would want to reach out to the support for your specific theme for if your theme has this option.
Admin
Ray
I was fine on the video until you said “click on site identity”… there is no such tab on my version. The first option is “Global” then Header, Breadcrumb, UberMenu{main], Blog, etc. No “Site Identity”…so obviously without being to get to that screen I’m not going anywhere. Is there another way in?
WPBeginner Support
If your theme has different settings and you are unable to find the favicon in the customization settings, you would want to reach out to the support for your specific theme to see if they have it located in a theme-specific area.
Admin
Krishna
Hii Wpbeginner!
I’m using Astra theme my website Favicon is working every one except Google search results. How can I fixed it?
WPBeginner Support
You would need to wait for Google at the moment.
Admin
Soul sultan
This is the awesome guide about how to add favicon on wodpress blog
WPBeginner Support
Thank you, glad you found our content helpful
Admin
Shomirul Islam Bonny
Thanks! It helped me!
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad it helped
Admin
Munendra Singh
all helpful post,, thanks
WPBeginner Support
Glad you found our post helpful
Admin
Raj
Great ! I always go through from your tutorials when ever i get stuck in any kind of issue. Thanks for it.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks, glad our articles could help
Admin
John Barson
Can’t Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Website? That was my problem. I did a fair bit of research where I finally found my issue. It was because the PHP GD Library was not enabled. Fortunately, I control my own server. I had upgraded the server PHP to v7.2 but I forgot to enable the PHP GD library. So…if you find when you try to add the site icon in the appearances section of your wordpress admin and the image you upload/select is not being accepted or you can’t use the crop image feature it is most likely because your webserver host has not enabled the GD Library.
WPBeginner Support
Thanks for sharing this information should someone else run into that issue
Admin
Cean Herzfield
Thank you so much! You saved me a lot of frustration because I’m working on Xampp and it was disabled by default. Now wouldn’t it have been nice if they had mentioned it in the article.
Pritam
Favicon of my website was visible before I changed DNS for Cloudflare. Now it is visible in the admin side but not on the website. How to solve this problem. you can check on my website
Michele A
This tutorial was wonderful! Thank you so much for the great work!
Jacques
My Favicon is updating in ADMIN side, but not on user side
Tracy
Were you able to figure out how to fix it?
RAJ
“When I go to the “Site Identity” tab, there is no place to upload a site icon. The only option I have is the “Site Title”. That’s ALL!
I am using WordPress 4.7.3.”
Bekzat Sadykov
I guess, the WP theme you are using doesn’t have favicon implemented. So, if it is not declared in theme functions.php file, it won’t appear in admin/editor side.
You can hardcode it to header.php or use third-part plugins.
jacob
scroll down a little you will see the place to upload your favicon
Eleanor
Hi, I recently updated my website from HTTP to HTTPS and when that happened, the site icon stopped working. Does this mean that somewhere along the line I’ve missed a step? I’ve tried changing the image and reuploading a new one and that hasn’t worked. If someone types in the website URL using http then the old favicon (and not site icon) shows up, but the minute it’s https, then it disappears. The site icon though is visible when I’m logged into the dashboard.
Matt Parker
Eleanor
I’m on HTTPS and I have the same issue, did you find a solution?
Favicon only shows when I’m logged in in admin mode!
Jimmy
When I go to the “Site Identity” tab, there is no place to upload a site icon. The only option I have is the “Site Title”. That’s ALL!
I am using WordPress 4.7.3.
Please help!
Ahmed Akeem
I guess, the WP theme you are using doesn’t have favicon implemented. So, if it is not declared in theme functions.php file, it won’t appear in admin/editor side.
You can hardcode it to header.php or use third-part plugins.
Abubakar Sahabi Rafi
It really helped, more grease to our elbow.
Tim
Can anyone tell me how this new “Site Icon” feature is supposed to work? I get to the point where the file is uploaded and I get a dialog box that offers to crop the image. The problem is 1) my image doesn’t need to be cropped and 2) there’s no “Save” button (or “Done” or anything similar), only a “Crop” button and the upper right corner X to close the dialog. If I click “Crop” I get an error (Error cropping this image, bla bla bla) and if I hit the X it closes. Either way, my image is not saved as a Site Icon (even though it is saved in the media library. After deleting the image, resizing it to exactly 512×512, I upload it again. This time, no crop dialog, just the “Select” image dialog. I click select, the image has a box around it and a check mark and nothing else happens. No Save, etc. When I close the dialog, there’s still “No image selected.” This happens in Chrome AND Firefox. I’m ready to throw WordPress away and hand code everything. I haven’t used WordPress in a couple of years and I’m frustrated with what seems like buggy, poor design and feature bloat.
Brian
code easy to interpret, it worked out. thanks…