Back in November I gave a tip on how you could edit one of the Wordpress administrative php files to give your WP-Admin console it’s own favicon. That works great, until you update your version of Wordpress and it overwrites the changes you made (thanks to Miriam for the reminder). To fix this annoyance, I’ve written my very first Wordpress plugin, aptly named “Admin Favicon”. It’s simple. It’s basic. It gets the job done.
Admin Favicon
An original Wordpress plugin by John Kolbert
Version: 1.3
Tested and working on Wordpress 2.3 - 2.6.x
Official WordPress Repository URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/admin-favicon/
Page last updated: July 29, 2008
Features
- Gives your Wordpress backend a custom favicon.
Description
Admin Favicon is a very simple plugin. It creates a link to a shortcut icon, or favicon, into the header of the Wordpress administrative console. What does this mean? Look at the address bar or tab indicator of your web browser. You should see an image next to the URL of this page. This is a favicon. It lets you easily identify this page from other pages you have open. This is very valuable for tabbed browsing, when you have many tabs open at the same time.
The Wordpress administrative console (the backend interface you use to maintain your blog) doesn’t have a favicon. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they’ll add one. But until then, this plugin lets you easily add your own custom favicon. This way you can easily identify your admin tab from the load of other tabs you have open. Admin Favicon simply adds the following code into the header of your admin pages:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.YourLinkHere.com/favicon.ico" >
Download
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Download: adminfavicon.zip (6.8 kb)
Contents: adminfavicon.php, readme.txt, wpfavicon.ico
Installation
After downloading adminfavicon.zip, unzip it’s contents and upload them to your wp-content/plugins Wordpress directory (you do not need to upload wpfavicon.ico). If you wish to use the sample Wordpress favicon provided, upload wpfavicon.ico into the location of your choosing on your server. Then, navigate to the plugins page in the Wordpress administrative console and press “Activate”.
Usage
This plugin creates a new options menu. In the top navigation bar of your administrative console, click on “Options”. Then, in the sub menu that appears, click on “Admin Favicon”. An options page will then appear. In the text box labeled “Favicon URL”, enter the web address of your desired favicon. If you uploaded the sample wpfavicon.ico, enter it’s location on your server here. Otherwise, use your own favicon image. Typically, this will be an ico file that you’ve created and uploaded to your server. For example, if you’ve uploaded favicon.ico to your main website address, you would enter http://www.MyMainWebsiteAddress.com/favicon.ico
To create your own Favicon you can use one of many online services. I personally like Genfavicon, a free service that lets you convert your own images into a favicon file. After you create your favicon, upload it to you web server and follow the directions as normal.
Questions and Support
This is a very simple plugin. Thus, I don’t see many support questions arising. However, if you should think of one, please leave it in the comments box so that others can benefit from my response. I’m usually fairly quick at responding. This is my first plugin, and I don’t code professionally. I looked at several other plugins to get an idea of how to do this. Thus you may find many ways to improve this code. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments below.
What Others are Saying
Video review by Weblog Tools Collection
Review by Jeffro2pt0
Special thanks to Randy for fixing the transparency of the favicon file.
This is a fun plugin! I had seen the icons on other sites before but I was unsure how they got them there. Thanks for sharing the plugin as well as the reminder that updating WP undoes your changes.
SEO musings’s last blog post..Mince Pies
I personally use it and it’s actually quite the time saver even if it’s one of the simplest plugins ever created. Nice going John.
Jeffro2pt0’s last blog post..WordPress Weekly Episode 3
@Jeffro Thanks for the kind words!
This is neat!
I always used to edit the template file to manually update the icon. I’m still stuck with the two lesbians kissing… :)
Mike’s last blog post..The Right Vs The Left Brain
@Mike Glad you like it Mike! Yeah, it would have been more fun to include an “interesting” ICO file, but I chickened out at the last minute. LOL
Thanks for this plugin. I was hacking the base WordPress install to accomplish this. Excellent work!
(As a tip for others, I have many WordPress installations. I often have multiple tabs open with WordPress from different sites and then I can’t tell them apart. Instead of using WordPress “W” as a favicon, I use a grey-scale version of the favicon from the sites themselves. John’s plug-in makes it easy choose any favicon you want.)
Thanks again! ~randy
Randy’s last blog post..Greek Philosophy Study
@Randy I’m glad you’ve found a use for it! I actually don’t use the favicon included in the plugin either. I use a blue version of the favicon I use for this blog. You’re right, it makes it much easier when you have official Wordpress page open. Thanks for the tip!
I notice that the favicon you include with this plugin has white pixels around the outside of the circle. I made those pixels transparent on my installation, and I can send that to you if you are interested.
Randy’s last blog post..Greek Philosophy Study
@Randy Way to catch my lazyness! It would be great if you would send me that favicon. I’ll shoot you an email.
Hi,
I feel bad. It’s not working with me. The installation works, but not fav display.
I downloaded some working favicon from other website to check the file — nop, nada, nothing…
I am under WP 2.5.1.
Thank you for the good work anyway.
Ooops… Actualy, it work perfectly. I guess it was a cache issue.
Sorry for the annoyance.
thank you again !
Have a nice day.
@logicalnot: No problem. Glad you got it working!
Great! This was exactly the plugin I was looking for. Thank you so much!
Nice plugin. Worked great…until I installed another favicon plugin for my non-admin webpages. It seems to be over riding your plugin. Any suggestions on how to get both to work would be greatly appreciated.
Brian, give me the name of the plugin and I’ll look into it on Monday (I’m out of town right now). Admin Favicon is a simple plugin, it just inserts the favicon link into all the header pages. It’s possible the other plugin you are doing is trying to do the same thing.
John,
The name of the second plugin I added is MaxBlogPress Favicon. If there is a way for me to use your plugin for both my admin/dashboard and for my posts (different icons)? Am happier with your plugin. No rush, am still setting up my page. Thanks
Thanks for this simple but much needed plugin! I can’t believe WP doesn’t already put their favicon into the admin. Perhaps they’ll roll this feature into a future release…
No favicon for WP Admin. Big annoyance. Check for “favicon wordpress admin” in Google. Found your plugin right away. Download, install, configure, works great. Yeah! Problem solved. Thanks a lot.
thanks but my favicon can not open in mozilla firefox…