Why does the Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator WordPress plugin need to be activated all the time?

Here is how to use the Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator WordPress plugin:

  • Install and activate the plugin
  • Go to Appearance > Favicon
  • Design and setup the favicon. Well done!
  • Forget about it

Now, it is tempting to say “Hey, the mission of the plugin is completed. Let’s deactivate it”. Bad move. The plugin needs to be active all the time.

Granted: most of the work is done at creation time, when the favicon is setup. However, the plugin has something to do every time to fulfill its purpose: it must inject special HTML markups in all pages served by WordPress. This is done dynamically. In other words, each time a visitor views a page of your site, Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator is triggered and sends him the favicon markups.

“Wait, doesn’t it slow down my site?” you are wondering. Don’t worry, the plugin was designed to be extremely lightweight and does not affect the performance of WordPress.

If you ever install a favicon manually in WordPress, you may have edited a file called header.php. So you may wonder why the plugin does not behave in a similar fashion. Modifying header.php is actually a bad practice. The major issue is a theme switch. Because header.php comes from the current theme, it is changed whenever you change or update your theme. This is when things start to be messy and you wish your plugins had a better, modular design.

We aim at providing the best experience for favicon on WordPress. If you have questions, please leave us a comment.

Published by

Philippe Bernard

I'm a web developer and the author of RealFaviconGenerator. I created this site because I felt frustrated when I tried to generate the favicon of my previous web project.

11 thoughts on “Why does the Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator WordPress plugin need to be activated all the time?”

  1. I find the favicon code inside .htaccess to be overwritten and deleted every time I update some plugins such as Wordfence for example but I think that also others that touch the .htaccess file are responsible too. This is a big nuisance because it’s not a turn it on and forget about it solution and I have to check and manually update the file after every plugin update. :/

    1. Unfortunately it is quite hard to have .htaccess well maintained in WordPress. As you mention, plugins often compete to update it.

      This said, this feature in RealFaviconGenerator plugin is only a nice to have. It simulates icon files presence in the root directory of your site, which is best but certainly not mandatory. You can check for yourself by running the favicon checker on your site when .htaccess is reverted: the favicon is still here, up and running.

      Unless you feel confident with .htaccess, I suggest you to not update it manually. The gain is limited, whereas you can certainly harm your site if you don’t do it correctly.

      1. I have the same problem with htaccess being overwritten

        Can I move the favicongenerator code outside the wordpress block so it doesn’t get overwritten?

        I have other code outside the block already so I know what I’m doing
        Thanks

        1. Hi,

          RealFaviconGenerator’s code in htaccess is only a nice to have. This is to guard you from a few 404 errors when a browser looks for /favicon.ico or other well known URLs. But this is completely optional.

          So if you have troubles with your htaccess file, you can drop all lines from RealFaviconGenerator and forget about it, really.

  2. I just used Real Fav Gen for the first time. It worked well however the color of the text in my favicon is off… a pale blue instead of the original off white. How do I correct this?
    Also I checked one of the 16×16 scaleable algolrhythm thingies and there is no way to de-select… is that a problem. Please advise on how to address these two issues. And if they can’t be resolved, how do I start over. I tried to do that but the plugin says my favicon is up and ready and there doesn’t appear to be a way to go back to starting point… so again how to start over? Many thanks

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