For a while when checking the access logs on my various sites there was an error message that I could not explain.
I kept seeing reports of ‘favicon.ico’ file not found.
I couldn’t think of any webpages that I had created that used an image file called favicon so I ignored it for ages.
Couple that with the fact that it appeared on nearly all of the sites I maintain it really perplexed me. I thought perhaps it was related to the HTML editor I was using (Macromedia).
A few days ago I noticed the error again so I "Google’d" for ‘favicon’. Then it all made sense.
When you add a bookmark, or a link to your browser, or save a bookmark to your desktop, quite often instead of the regular Icon (the IE icon in the case of Internet Explorer), a different icon is displayed.
For example if you view my site www.yaps4u.net you will now see that instead of the old boring icon, there is now a question mark style icon.
If you create an icon file and place it in the top level folder of your website and name it favicon.ico whenever someone creates a bookmark, link or shortcut the browser will attempt to fetch this file.
So the errors I had been seeing were people bookmarking my site and then the browser looking for the favicon.ico file. As I didn’t have one, it caused a file not found error.
There are a number of free icon editors out there to let you create your own icon files, or you can search the vast number of free icons available on the web.
Chris – you know when you pick up a snippet of info and think to yourself – “D’know – that’ll come in handy one day”? – favicons…… now I know 🙂
That was the reason behind me having my technowotsit part of the blog.
I intended to write down all those things that I found and thought one day that might be useful. (Only to forget it about 2 hours later).
But it is like Favourites lists on browsers. How many do you have? And how many do you visit often? In my case, loads and hardly ever. I even forget that I added a link as a favourite.
But, I’ll try and remember to post my ‘useless’ snippets in the hope that one day I will remember where I put them.
“Bookmarks” in Netscape? Probably around 800 or so 🙂 I have a twice yearly “scalping” of links on my weblog – or when I can be bothered to re-design it again.
I’m spending most of my spare internet time expanding ym “laser eye surgery” pages – which are earning an “interesting” amount of money off Google Adsense adverts 🙂