favicon.ico issues

[#1]

I thought I understood how to get a site specific icon in the various bits of a browser in place of the browser's generic icon - e.g. Blue e in IE.
Just put a favicon.ico file into the root of the website.
Did just that on my IIS server (development platform) and proved it worked as expected
Pushed the file out to my PN web service (hosted in a sub-dir under /htdocs) but it did not work.
Did a good deal of messing around with that site and another non on PN platforms and that too did not work.

After hours of messing I've discovered that though http://website.co.uk delivers the site's content correctly, it does not find / deliver the /favicon.ico file
Change the address to http://www.website.co.uk and the /favicon.ico file is found 
Can anyone explain what is amiss here please?  If both http://www.website.co.uk and http://website.co.uk "point" to the same place and to all intents and purposes deliver the same content, why is the /favicon.ico file only "delivered" when the request comes from www. ?
Kevin

[#2]

I've got a favicon on my old discontinued site, hosted on PlusNet. http://www.rpm-mozilla.org.uk
Is that showing the same symptoms as what your seeing Kevin? I can't check myself at the moment as I'm down with a cold and I'm just using my iPod to write this and that doesn't show favicons at all (unless bookmarked in the special folder).

[#3]

Quote from: RPMozley

I've got a favicon on my old discontinued site, hosted on PlusNet. http://www.rpm-mozilla.org.uk Is that showing the same symptoms

Both http://www.rpm-mozilla.org.uk and http://rpm-mozilla.org.uk showing favicons here (IE11 and FF) though, unexpectedly, both URLs show www.rpm-mozilla.org.uk in the tab at the top of the page (checked source code and shows as TITLE content, had thought at first one address might perhaps have been a redirect somehow).

Regards,
Penny.

[#4]

Ha ha, yes Penny, I did make the title of the page the web address.
Sorry that threw you a bit.
Anyway, without being able to see Kevin's source code it's a bit difficult to see where things are going wrong but it does point to a full address quote rather than a relative address location. (Please excuse any wrong technical terminology)

[#5]

Quote from: Townman

After hours of messing I've discovered that though http://website.co.uk delivers the site's content correctly, it does not find / deliver the /favicon.ico file Change the address to http://www.website.co.uk and the /favicon.ico file is found

Are you referring to one of the two domains hosted against your account? If you are then I'm unable to replicate this problem using the latest release build of Firefox. I see the favicons browsing to both website.co.uk and the www subdomains

[#6]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for looking at this, yes it is in relation to the two domains on my account.  I am seeing the same in respect of a site hosted elsewhere which I look after.  You are now making me suspect that this is an IE11 issue.
Cheers,
Kevin

[#7]

Well, to confuse things further, I don't have any problems using IE11 either (Windows 7 x64)

[#8]

Cheers Bob,
Thanks for adding confusion to what was looking like a nicely profiled issue 
I was already suspecting a crack in my theory though - the reason I've been messing with this was to help one of my referrals (t-c-o-j) with his new website (tlc).  After understating the problem, we put a favicon.ico on his site.  I see it when accessed as www.tlc.... but not tlc...
He does not see it at all.  We are both iE11 on Win7 x64 too. 
Really appreciate your help Bob and being a point of reference!
Cheers,
Kevin

[#9]

It could be a cache issue with the browsers in question. Simple check for this possibility is to empty the cache and force a reload of the site.
Unless of course you've already tried this, I'm simply wasting your time. 

[#10]

Perhaps not relevant here, but to get Firefox to display my site favicon I think I had to bookmark it. Could then delete the bookmark and the favicon remained.

[#11]

Quote from: RPMozley

Unless of course you've already tried this, I'm simply wasting your time.

RPMozley,
You're never a waste of time... your advice is always sound.  I might not have thought about this!  Have I done it though?  No.
I'm always reluctant to adopt sledge hammer solutions - a complete clear of the cache creates the need to redownload every static element of the sites I frequent, increasing access time and bandwidth utilisation.  I have though sought to kill the favicons from the IE cache, but I am not convinced that action is behaving properly.
I am concluding that this characteristic is related to IE11.
Despite what I've read, I conclude that favicon support is somewhat patchy; Apple's Safari certainly does not seem to support it at all.
Kevin