IE Favicon issues. .htaccess and the Boost Module for Drupal 6

IE Favicon issues, .htaccess and the Boost Module for Drupal 6

I recently spent a significant amount of time tracking down an issue on a client site where the favicon.ico file would display properly on all browser/os combinations with the exception of IE ( all versions).

After checking the usual suspects (corrupted favicon.ico file, proper file size/format, permission settings, etc.) I started to dig a little deeper, trying to think of things that would affect display.

I'd read some posts regarding alternate caching locations for the favicon.ico file, so I started by disabling the caching mechanism on my Drupal site, making sure to clear the browser cache at each step and recheck if the favicon was showing.

While disabling the boost module(which had no effect) I remembered that Boost requires additional rules be set in .htaccess. I restored my .htaccess file from my backup (always make a backup) and the proper favicon showed up in IE.

Like a good open source contributor, I searched the issue queue for boost module to find references to favicon.ico before filing a bug report. In the process I noticed that there was a new version of boost out (although no reference to favicon.ico/IE issues in the release notes.)

Fortunately Installing a new version of Boost, and updating the .htaccess file with the new rules solved the problem.