Textpattern favicon

robpenfold · 2019-08-03 09:46:02

I’m playing around with Textpattern and like how fast it is

When I put my test site in GTMetrix to get a speed score, most things are good, but one thing that slows it down is that it cannot find the favicon and this leads to a 404 error. When I search the files I can see /public_html/textpattern/admin-themes/classic/assets/img/favicon.ico but cannot see how to fix this?
https://llicit.com/favicon.ico
ta Rob

Pat64 · 2019-08-03 09:54:16

Hi Robpenfold.

Right. Noticed and reported to Devs: the default theme hasn’t any favicons in it’s distrubution.

You have 2 options:

Adding a fake favicon with this line into you <head> HTML document part:

<link href="data:image/x-icon;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQEAYAAABPYyMiAAAABmJLR0T///////8JWPfcAAAACXBIWXMAAABIAAAASABGyWs+AAAAF0lEQVRIx2NgGAWjYBSMglEwCkbBSAcACBAAAeaR9cIAAAAASUVORK5CYII=" rel="icon" type="image/x-icon">

Or (better), create yours and use this online tool to help: https://realfavicongenerator.net/

robpenfold · 2019-08-04 03:55:15

Thanks Patrick,

Have gone with the fake favicon option as that has fixed the speed problem
Have added your pat_speeder plugin also

ta, Rob

gaekwad · 2019-08-04 17:13:45

Perhaps I’m missing something obvious – if you have a bogus favicon that isn’t going to get much use in real terms, set a zero byte favicon.ico in the filesystem with a looooong expiry header and it’ll be cached by the browser after the first access. Right? I’m a bit rusty with these things, but that’s how it used to work.

colak · 2019-08-04 19:37:24

Or just delete the favicon call. As far as I know, favicons are not required by any validation or SEO services.

I like Patrick’s hack though:)

Pat64 · 2019-08-05 04:45:28

😉

It’s not my hack but a David Walsh’s one: https://davidwalsh.name/blank-favicon.

Sure favicons are not necessary for SEO or anything else but cause a trouble into your browser console if they are missing and it’s annoying.

Last edited by Pat64 (2019-08-05 04:46:38)

gaekwad · 2019-08-05 10:17:02

Pat64 wrote #318958:

Sure favicons are not necessary for SEO or anything else but cause a trouble into your browser console if they are missing and it’s annoying.

Another factor, perhaps related, is the effect on web server log files. Every client that requests a favicon that does not exist may write a line in a web server access or error log file. Over time, those lines add up to a considerable amount of log file storage.

Pat64 · 2019-08-05 13:38:11

Thank you gaekwad: very interesting!

colak · 2019-08-05 15:05:24

So, what you are saying is that favicons are not served to but requested by the browsers?

phiw13 · 2019-08-06 00:24:12

Once upon a time the HTML spec, based on the practice of the Microsoft browser of the day, suggested that the browser actively look for a favicon in the root of the site. That text seems to have vanished ( although the HTML spec becomes more and more unreadable, I may have missed it). The site owner could/can serve a favicon from a different location, using the <link rel=icon />. Safari, Edge and Chrome do look for the existence of such an image in the root (favicon.*) – unless a different image is specified. And flag an error in their console, and fill the serve logs if the image does not exist.

That implies a slight slow down for the site while it searches for the non-existing image, as flagged in PageSpeed and similar tools. We’re talking milliseconds here, at best. Masssive!
(and filling the server logs with 404 errors may affect server performance on a much accessed site).

So yeah, if you have a popular site, and don’t care about the favicon, stick a 1by1px transparent GIF in the root of your server, or if cannot do that, use the code flagged by Pat64 above.

zero · 2019-08-07 18:23:40

Google is adding favicons to all search results

bici · 2019-08-09 07:30:45

zero wrote #318986:

Google is adding favicons to all search results

good or bad or??

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#1 2019-08-03 09:46:02