HostGator is indeed one of the top-rated web hosting providers available in the market. After buying your web hosting plan, HostGator sets a default favicon for your website. In this article, I’m showing you how to change HostGator favicon.
Assuming you want to run a blog or a business website, you will definitely need to set up WordPress as your content management system. This could be simply installed from the HostGator cPanel dashboard with a few clicks.
The first thing to do after installing WordPress is to change the default HostGator favicon. And the favicon is your website’s favorite icon that appears on the browser’s tab. It basically works as a descriptive image for what your website is all about.
First: Sign Up For HostGator Web Hosting
If you’ve already bought web hosting from HostGator, you can skip this step and proceed with the other technical steps below.
If you’ve not yet purchased web hosting, then let’s do it with a 70% exclusive discount (for a limited time). To grab your discount, You will need to use our promo link. This is an exclusive discount for our blog readers. I’m sure you don’t want to miss it.
HostGator is offering a wide range of web hosting services. If you’re just getting started, I would recommend grabbing a shared hosting plan. Baby plan suits me very well and allows me to host unlimited domains.
What is Favicon?
The favicon is a small icon that appears on the browser’s tab for your website. Its mission is to work as a descriptive icon for what your website is all about.
And it helps a lot when your visitors are saving a shortcut for your website on their desktops, tablets, or smartphones. Accordingly, a custom well-made favicon gives your site an identity that you definitely need.
HostGator sets – by default – a favicon for your website. So if your website is kind of new without a custom favicon set, HostGator will automatically display their favicon for your website.
I would say this should be the very first thing to do after purchasing a web hosting plan from HostGator. I mean to get rid of their default favicon. So let’s get started and give your website a whole new identity.
How To Create Favicon?
First of all, you’ll need to create a favicon. Favicon files are usually (.ICO) files. You can also design it in a .jpeg or .png logo, then convert it into the required extension.
One of the most popular favicon generators is Favicon-generator.org. It will definitely give you whatever you may need to create a stunning favicon for your website.
Dimensions are usually 16px X 16px. But it also could be 32px X 32px or 128px X 128px. Whichever you prefer to use won’t make any difference. It will be automatically scaled to fit in the associated place.
So, it is good to have a minimum of 16x16px size. Besides these, you can include the following common sizes for your website favicon image:
- 16×16
- 32×32
- 48×48
- 64×64
- 128×128
How to Remove HostGator Favicon?
Bottom line; if you’re not setting a custom favicon for your website, HostGator will automatically apply their default favicon for your website.
Let’s remove HostGator favicon. Here are different methods you can use:
1. Upload Favicon in Root Directory:
That’s a very simple technique that usually works great for everyone. All you need to do is to upload the favicon (.ICO) file into your website root directory (/public_html/).
The favicon format should be (.CO) file in order for the system to accept it automatically using this method. Other formats like (.JPG) or (.PNG) will not actually work with this method. Alternatively, you can use the second method for the other favicon formats via the WordPress theme settings itself.
Once there, the favicon will be updated automatically to the right one. You just want to make sure of using the proper extension (.ICO). Any other extension won’t actually work with this method.
In HostGator cPanel Dashboard, head over to (File Manager). In there, you can check the /public_html/ directory and upload the favicon right away. This is how it works!
2. Set Favicon In WordPress Theme Settings:
Using WordPress for your website will make your life so much easier. You can basically control your whole website content via the intuitive WordPress dashboard.
As for the Favicon, many themes will give you the favicon upload tool as a feature in the theme settings. All you will need to do is to go over to Theme Settings and update the favicon by uploading it directly in there!
While not every single WordPress theme is not supporting this feature, many will do. Here, I would recommend ElegentThemes or MyThemeShop themes. Both themes are great with many features and tools to have the most wonderful website you’ve been dreaming of.
3. Using WordPress Plugin:
This is the easiest method you can use (if your theme is not supporting this feature). I recommend All In One Favicon. It’s very easy and straight-forward. The plugin will let you choose and upload a favicon easily.
You can even set up a different icon for your visitors and for you when you are working on your dashboard. The settings are very easy to work and play with. And within minutes, you will be done changing HostGator favicon.
How To Get Favicon?
There are a few awesome websites to get favicon created for you. All you need to do is to enter the website URL or the website title and the tools will take care of it for you.
We’ve been using these websites to get favicons:
For more information about how to change the HostGator favicon, you may contact HostGator support. They will be so willing to help you do this with ease.
What Are Favicon Benefits:
A favicon helps detecting website identity online. It basically is your website icon. When a visitor bookmarks your page, the favicon is the website icons on his bookmarking library. Furthermore, Google and search engines started displaying the website’s favicon beside the title in search results.
Here is a glance on the top benefits for having a favicon:
- Detects your website identity & interface.
- Gives kind of trust to the website.
- It helps with your brand awareness goals.
- Load necessary pages quicker from bookmarks.
- It is displayed in Google search results besides the website’s title.
Overall, a favicon nowadays is very important for a strong website. Having a default HostGator favicon on the browser’s bar is not at all professional. Thus, this is the very first thing to update on launching your website.
HostGator Favicon Not Showing Up:
You may successfully follow the above-mentioned methods to change HostGator favicon. Yet, you still get the new HostGator favicon not changing. That’s a pretty common issue. And is very easy to resolve.
All you will need to do is to basically clear your browser’s cache/cookies and reload the page. By doing this, you’ll force the browser to reload the page freshly instead of loading a cached copy.
Conclusion:
That was it all about how to change HostGator favicon. It’s very important to change the HostGator default favicon before start building your website. A favicon means your website identity. You can use one of the three methods mentioned above.
Thanks for reading. Don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments below shall you’ve got any questions of inquiries. I would love to help you further. And don’t forget to share this article with everyone on social media.
Wasn’t sure how to change my favicon and was having a bit of a fight with the Hostgator control panel. Thanks to your post I’ve now changed it in my theme 🙂 Much easier. Bye bye gator 😉
Well said but not really detailed for a starter will still be thrown overboard with the explanation. i tried uploading via my cpanel and refreshed my sites but the “alligator icon” was still there.
That’s very normal. You may need to clear your browser’s cache and reloading the page. Instead, you may need to upload the favicon via WordPress theme settings.
A good tip for a starter on how to remove the fav icon. Many people don’t know about fav icon and this blog has detail information about it.