Added some new icons to a site I was building but they refused to load. I got a HTTP/403 (permission denied) error on the files. When I looked in the apache log file I saw the following.

[Sat Oct 18 08:56:54 2014] [crit] [client 127.0.0.1] (13)Permission denied: [...]/public/assets/img/icons/social/cuteicons/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable

The problem was, the only directory with a .htaccess file was the root directory of the website. What was wrong? Well, it turns out the directories the icons were in had the wrong permissions set. I hade copied an unzipped folder directly in to my web site. In order for apache to work properly every directory has to have the execute flag set.

So, after a…

chmod 755 /folder/name

…the icons loaded as they should.