How to upload your favicon to Blogger blog inspite of error messages

Wikipedia defines a "...favicon (short for Favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, Web site icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, as a file containing one or more small icons, most commonly 16×16 pixels, associated with a particular Web site or Web page." In other words, websites are literally identified by their favicons.

Traditionally, Blogger blogs are forced to make do with the default common well-known Blogger favicon (see picture below), except they link their blogs via html to favicons hosted on sites other than Blogger. However, some browsers, the worst culprit being Internet Explorer, never showed these hosted favicons. Many bloggers therefore rejoiced when Blogger announced months ago that it would now support favicons uploaded to Blogger blogs.

Below is an example of Blogger's default favicon in the red box below:

With this wonderful news from Blogger, however, came many unforseen circumstances (?bugs). Blogger had instructed that:

"This initial launch only supports .ico files, but you can easily convert your JPEG, PNG, or other non-ico image file using your own image software. There are also many conversion tools online, and a quick Google Search brings up a handful of options such as http://www.icoconverter.com/."

Many Bloggers including me, however, had a difficult time uploading these favicons. Despite following Blogger's instructions meticulously and making sure the favicon files were less than 10kb in size, error messages like 'Not a valid file type', 'This file is too large. You can upload a file up to 10kb in size', 'Not a square image', and many other similar messages frustrated bloggers across the world.

Well, I accidentally stumbled across a solution after hours of sleepless trials, errors and Google-searches.

Having difficulty uploading your favicons to Blogger blog?

If you are currently having issues uploading your favicons, one of the suggestions below will SURELY help:

1. Try uploading a JPEG or PNG file instead of an ICO file. This worked for me on three of my blogs.
   SUGGESTION: you may also try other file types like GIF, TIF, etc; to see which works for you. I didn't use them but they just may work for you
2. Try squaring up your image. I used Square Image Generator and it worked for me
   Let me add here that I am not affiliated to that site in any way
3. Reduce the size of your image to less than 10kb using any Image Managing Software. I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager (See Microsoft Picture Manager or Google's Picasa Image Editor).
   NOTE: I noticed I could upload images more than 10kb but less than 100kb size.
   SUGGESTION: you may Google-search for and download any free image managing software.
4. If you tried any other methods that worked for you, please share with other bloggers here by leaving a message via the "Post A Comment" link below. 

Keep blogging. And thanks for stopping by!