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New error messages - robots and favicon

What do they mean?

         

spikedo55

6:48 pm on Jan 31, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Checking my control panel for my site, I wandered into a section for error messages and found these two:

File does not exist: /home/public_html/robots.txt
File does not exist: /home/public_html/favicon.ico

I don't have any files like these. What are they for? Should I create them? Where would they go?

Thanks.

bcc1234

6:51 pm on Jan 31, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Are you looking at the apache error log?
It displays the absolute path of a file instead of a request url.

jdMorgan

7:12 pm on Jan 31, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



spikedo55,

robots.txt is a file which goes in your site's top-level directory to instruct search engine spiders which pages and objects you wish them to not include in their search results. Having no robots.txt tells them that they may request and index all pages and objects on your site.

If you wish to exclude all or some robots from all or part of your site, a good starting point is this robots.txt tutorial [searchengineworld.com].

Otherwise, you can prevent the 404 errors by uploading a blank file and naming it robots.txt.

favicon.ico is a special-format image file used to display an icon for your website in the browser address bar and in the user's bookmarked favorites list. For more info, see the favicon.com [favicon.com] web site.

HTH,
Jim