What is the purpose of shortcut icons for a homepage and how can they be implemented in PHP?

Shortcut icons for a homepage serve as a visual representation of a website and help users identify it easily when bookmarked or added to the home screen of a device. These icons are typically displayed in the browser tab and on mobile devices. To implement shortcut icons in PHP, you can use the HTML `<link>` tag in the `<head>` section of your webpage to specify the path to the icon file.

&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
&lt;head&gt;
    &lt;link rel=&quot;shortcut icon&quot; href=&quot;favicon.ico&quot; type=&quot;image/x-icon&quot;&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;
&lt;body&gt;
    &lt;!-- Your webpage content here --&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;