WordPress users: your favicon up-to-date. Automatically.

With 60,000 active installs, Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator WordPress plugin is the most favicon-related WordPress plugin. Since a few months, the plugin looks for updates and notifies you whenever the favicon should be refreshed.

There is new stuff. The plugin is now able to update the favicon automatically. Next time Apple introduces a new Touch icon resolution for its latest iPhone, your favicon will be regenerated overnight.

Automatic update notice

This feature relies on the non_interactive_request parameter of the interactive request API. Each time you use the plugin to create a favicon, it not only installs the generated package. It also saves all settings: the iOS design, the compression rate… So whenever an update is available, the plugin is autonomous and can create your favicon update, yet taking advantage of the improvements of RealFaviconGenerator.

Is it the end of manual updates? Nope. Some updates require human interactions. For example, RealFaviconGenerator will someday supports Coast by Opera. This update does not make sense in an automated fashion. It requires you to pick the design that matches your icon and site. So still expect to work on your favicon again from time to time.

Web site, interactive API and non-interactive API now work together

Until now, RealFaviconGenerator consisted in two universes:

  • The interactive API, aka “User interacts with the UI to create a favicon”
  • The non-interactive API. Post a favicon generation request to the web service and get your package a second later

Although similar, these two domains used to never speak to each other.

This time is over. Now, when you use either the interactive API of simply RealFaviconGenerator as a web site, the non-interactive request is never far.

RealFaviconGenerator, the web site

The regular way to use RealFaviconGenerator is accessing it via the web browser. A few clicks later, you are ready to download the favicon package. Until today, that was the end of the story. But you can now get the equivalent non-interactive API request:

Generated non-interactive API request

Follow the instructions and you get a working API request.

Interactive API

The interactive API is not different of the classic web site: you get the same favicon editor and same options. When the client is back in control (for example the Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator WordPress plugin), the transaction is over.

But there is more: the API client receives the equivalent non-interactive API request. It can reissue the request as is to create the favicon again.

What’s next?

Expect some updates in the WordPress plugin in the next few weeks! Grunt and Gulp plugins are also on the TODO list.