solved What does "apple-touch-icon-precomposed" mean in the "Users Online" log?

I am trying to learn about the people who visit my site by looking at the Users Online log in Dashboard.

Often I see a subdomain URL that refers to part of my site, and indicates where a visitor landed.

What does the following mean?

/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png

If I put this into the URL for my domain, a "Page does not exist" message appears.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 11/19/17 03:12:18AM

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12480497/why-am-i-getting-error-for-apple-touch-icon-precomposed-png

Looks like it is an apple device checking for a default icon and not finding it.

The discussion I found with that stack overflow link looks relevant, but the discussion thread assumes that the reader knows why and where people are displaying favicon or icons, or why and where they looking at them. There is no context and I cannot make head nor tail from it.

I have noticed a tiny JR bue/green favicon appears at left next to the URL of my site in my browser when I am looking at my site. That is presumably a default icon that I can change somewhere, somehow. Would this be causing the odd message I see for any reason?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

ah, yeah true. favicon is a very common term known website developers and stackoverflow is a technical group for technical users, so that might not get explained.

When I dont know a term I usually do this in a search engine:
and it gives me results like this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+favicon&t=ffab&atb=v67-2&ia=definition

along with a link to wikipedia.

That jr blue/green icon is the favicon, you have one of those. What some device is is seeing if you have a apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png icon too, you dont, so it gets recorded in your error log because something that was searched for wasnt found.

If i build an app that has a special place in it for an image if the website has that image, I can request it. say a /special-image-for-mikes-app.png image.

Now nobody knows that my app checks for that image, so nobody is going to prepare it for me. But if my app visits their site they will see that an app came and checked for that image by an error message in their logs.

I generated a full set of icons and uploaded them to the academicskills site which fixed all favicon/touch icon related 404s. You can also define them in the head of your template, but uploading them to the site home directory works as well as long as they are named correctly.

Here is the tool:
http://realfavicongenerator.net/
You can run a check on your site, then upload a suitable image and all icons are generated for you.

Here's the info:
https://css-tricks.com/favicon-quiz/


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Thanks all. This got me a little way further - and maybe far enough.

I rediscovered the inbuilt favicon system of my site, and could replace the JR favicon that was showing by default.

I also looked at realfavicongenerator and downloaded a package of favicon that I presume is more comprehensive than our inbuilt JR system. The instructions for realfavicongenerator include the statement:

"Extract this package in the root of your web site"

How to do this is unknown to me, and sounds dangerous to do through guesswork. The instructions give an example of yoursitename/favicon.ico as a way of finding the root, but all I found is a visual reproduction of an existing favicon, namely the JR default icon (even though this is no longer displayed by my site). I did not find any way to "extract the package".

The next instruction is to "Insert the following code in the head section of your pages:...etc"

I found a head section in the meta.tpl of my skin template editor. Is that where the code should go? Presumably the site only has only one head section.

Maybe all I really need is what I have been able to set up using the inbuilt JR "Favicon Creator" module, in the collection of "Site" modules.

I only need to know about "extracting a package" inside the "root" if there is a good reason to use the larger favicon set provided by the outside source.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 08/19/17 11:39:09PM

Unzip it and upload to your site home directory.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Thanks, but sorry... I don't know what that means.

I've been hunting about for definitions of "home directory" on the Internet, and something called public_html comes up, but when I look for this in my ACP, or in my skin templates search bar, nothing shows.

I will call this thread solved. Until I know better, it seems that the jr Favicon Creator module has solved my problem.

Thanks again. P.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

Whichever directory you installed jamroom in.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Thanks.

JR hosting did the install for me, so I think what I need to do here - some day - is open a contract request and pay someone to optimize my favicons for all users.

My members come from many different countries, using many different systems, and many of them undoubtedly using ancient versions of hardware and software.

It may actually be important for me to have as broad a range of favicons as can be practically used.

This discussion has helped me see the scope of the problem.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

Here on jamroom.net we DO have a favicon.ico but do not have a /apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png

Don't think its that important.