Favicons For Feeds

[gorin-images]

My recent upgrade to Pixelpost 1.6.0 inspired me to do a few other upgrades that I have wanted to do for a while, but hadn't gotten around to.

One of these, was to create, and add one of those shortcut link icons to my site, so that it would have somethng other than the generic browser icon. I figured out how to do this earlier, and it is working perfectly in all of my templates.

However, I have also noticed in my feedreader (Bloglines) that a number of the Pixelpost photoblogs I track have a little custom icon next to their feed link also.

What code do I add to my feeds in order to get my new Favicon to show up next to the feed name in readers that suppost this feature? I tried seearching for this on Google, but it has proven illusive.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[blinking8s]

what icon are you speaking of?

[jaywilliams]

I achieved this by placing a windows icon f file called favicon.ico into my root directory. (www.example.com/favicon.ico)

This might be helpful as well:
http://snook.ca/archives/rss/add_logo_to_feed/

[gorin-images]

@blinking8s

You can see and example of a Favicon here at my photoblog:

http://www.gorin-images.com/blog

If you use Internet Explosre, it will show up to the left of the site/page name and URL, and if you add any page to favorites/bookmarks, it will show up there as well.

You can see similar icons at jaywilliams' site above.

Also, if you look at jaywilliams' site, and check out the RSS feed in Internet Explorer, the Favicon shows up next to the site name in the URL and on the browser tab, and in Bloglines, it shows up next to his site name in the left hand pane.

I want to accomplish this same bejavior for my site. Just like jaywilliams, I have my favicon.ico file placed in the root directory of my pixelpost blog. But I am not getting the same result.

@jaywilliams

I checked out that snook think yesterday before posting. First, I tried his code for adding favicon to ATOM feeds. It did not work :( So I didn;t mess with the RSS one yet. I would prefer it if your solution of simply having this file in my root directory were able to get the result I want. For some reason, my site isn;t doing the same thing as yours with it. Did you make any other mods to your functions_feeds file to get this to work?

[dakwegmo]

In order for the /favicon.ico to work it has to be an actual icon file. If you have a gif, jpeg, or png file you want to use, you'll need to convert it to an icon (.ico) file using an icon editor.

[jaywilliams]

You don't have a Favicon in your root folder:

http://www.gorin-images.com/favicon.ico

Once you put one there, it should work.

[gorin-images]

Yup. Moved it. Works perfectly. I had in the the root folder for my blog, but not for the domain.

Is there anyway to relative link it so that I can use it without having to go all the way back out to the internet and then back to my photoblog via the full http://www.gorin-images.com/favicon.ico link? I just like to do that if possible. If it makes no difference, let me know.

Also, one thing strange I noticed, and this might not appear strange to someone who knows what they are doing (i.e. not like me), is that after changing the code on just one of my templates, the favicon showed up on all of mytemplates except for the comments template BEFORE I edited the code on any of these other templates. Why/how can that happen? I subsequently went in and made all of the favicon references in all of my templates identical, but I am just curious how templates that did not point to the new location were able to display the Favicon anyway.

This is how I learn ;)

[jaywilliams]

Most web browsers will check for a favicon in the root directory automatically, wether or not it is included in a meta tag. That how it works works with most feed readers too.

On my site, I don't have any favicon meta tags, as I know the browser will just grab it automatically.

[gorin-images]

Most web browsers will check for a favicon in the root directory automatically, wether or not it is included in a meta tag. That how it works works with most feed readers too.

On my site, I don't have any favicon meta tags, as I know the browser will just grab it automatically.

That's very strange then.. Because your favicon shows up next to your feed name in Bloglines. But mine, which I believe I now have set up exactly the same as yours, does not. And it has been set up that way since around 10:00 pm last night, so Bloglines surely would have pinged my feed since then.

Any other ideas?

[jaywilliams]

Chances are they don't look for a favicon every time they ping.
If they get a error 404, they probably just tell their script to forget checking for a favicon. Maybe you could contact them and see if you could have your feed re-cached?

[gorin-images]

I contacted them and asked them to re-cache the feed. They said that they had done this and it should work now.

But it doesn't work now. I have followed up with them. I believe at this point the issue is with them, or the interaction of their site with mine. I will update when we determine what the issue is and resolve it.

[gorin-images]

OK. I wrote to Bloglines and told them that the re-caching apparently had not resolved my issue, because I still wasn;t seeing this icon. They wrote me back and said re-caching HAD resolved the issue, because they said they WERE seeing my favicon in Bloglines.

I tried clearing my cache, refreshing my browser, unsubscribing and resubscribing to my feed in Bloglines several times, but no resolution.

The I got the idea that maybe there was something specific to my user-account itself. I decided to go to Bloglines, but rather than using my bookmark to get there, I decided to go there as a 1st time user would, via the Bloglines homepage. I went there, did a search for feeds with the search workd "Gorin" and up came my feed, withthe favicon displayed right next to it. Then I said I wanted to subscribe to it, and it asked me to login. I did this, and sure enough, now it is right there with the rest of my feeds, and now it is displaying the Favicon next to it.

That solved the issue. Thanks for all of your help with this.

[jaywilliams]

Wow, what a story!
It makes me wonder if it's *that* important to see that little 16x16 block of pixels. ;-)