Make a graphic (just a simple one) in your graphic's editor.

The format used must be:

• 16 colors in the palette
• 16x16 pixels in size

Save the graphic as .gif or .bmp file on your hard drive, you could make a file just for icons to serve as back up.

Enter the code in your index.htm file. (Or whatever page you want the ico to appear in). 

If you have access to the root of your web site, simply save your icon file as "favicon.ico" there. For example, if your web site is "www.example.com", your icon file should be available at "www.example.com/favicon.ico". The web browser will look for favicon.ico whenever your site is added to the favorites list and if it is found at the root of your web site, the icon will appear next to the link to your site.

You can also upload it into your images directory, but you will need to modify your web pages if you do. It is website owners own little branding space, and they offer improved usability when you i.e. are reviewing a long list of bookmarks, trying to find that particular website.

Kindly note, if you do not save it as "favicon.ico," it won't work. Also, don't just shrink an image to icon size and rename it with a ".ico" file extension. That won't work either because it's not a real icon file.

Once you create your favicon.ico file, upload it to your root directory of your website and put the following code in your html page in the header:

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="http://www.yourwebsite.com/favicon.ico">

By the way, you can specify multiple logos for multiple pages using the second method. Simply save your icons using unique names, such as logo1.ico, logo2.ico, logo3.ico for example, and replace "logo.ico" in the above HTML code with the name of the icon you want to use for any particular page.

IrfanView is an excellent freeware image viewer that supports the icon (.ico) image format. You can use it to shrink one of your regular images to a 16 X 16 size, then decrease the colors to 16 and save as a ".ico" file.