What is a favicon you may be asking.  A favicon is the image that appears at the start of the web address you have typed into your browser once it lands on the page you requested as illustrated below.

It helps your website stand out if people who are comparing websites and have several tabs open with different websites showing and all you can see is the favicons.  This obviously isn't the only reason, but it does seem to add an extra finishing touch to your website when you have taken the time to create your unique favicon instead of the default, blank white page look.

Most design software doesn't allow you to create a favicon.ico image and perhaps this is why so many website owners don't bother to create one.  However, there are many sites out there which will allow you to upload an image and it will actually create the favicon file for you and all you need to do is upload it to your hosting account and add a bit of code to your template and/or website and it will start to appear.

Add the text:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico">

to the header section in the html code.  I always put it just before the end of the header section which ends with </header>.  The code literally means that the browser has to go to the root folder of your hosting account and look for the file favicon.ico and to check that it's there you can type into your browser:

http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico and it should appear.  If you are having problems making it appear, you can change the code you add to include your domain name as well so it looks like:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/favicon.ico">

So now you know how to add it, now you need to know how to get your favicon.ico and the place I usually use is:

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

All you need to do is upload an image from your computer, make sure it's not too large in size and then follow the instructions.  Simple!