Comments on: 5 Little-Known Web Files That Can Enhance Your Website

By: Chris LaChance

Chris LaChance — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:07:11 +0000

Why wouldn’t we want to use these GeoTags instead of the RDF & KML? http://www.geo-tag.de/generator/en.html

Also, the SafeSearch default you have set up in your PICS.rdf example seems to disallow certain visitors. To allow everyone you only need the 1 it seems (according to their specs).

By: Nathan B

Nathan B — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 14:10:44 +0000

I still find humans.txt strange — robots.txt doesn’t list the robots who worked on the site; it grants or denies bots access to certain pages. How is humans.txt equivalent to that? I could see credits.txt , since that’s really what it is. But either way, hardly anyone will look for or find it. I think the best solution is still to include credits in the code itself as comments. I think it’s crazy that anyone would argue that’s intrusive or slows the site.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:43:17 +0000

The Geo.kml/Geo.rdf is really cool. It’ll be interesting to see how far and where geotagging goes

By: misiri

misiri — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:14:51 +0000

once again:
Brian Suda @ http://suda.co.uk/projects/microformats/hcard/ offers a button (and link) to make your e.g. microformated imprint-page to transform a vCard-”section” to a *.vcf

By: misiri

misiri — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:00:49 +0000

I had to notice that the ICRA labeling is no longer available.
http://icra.org/

I have often included this file in order to make a small contribution to the protection of minors (although none of the websites would have needed a hint …).

By: fipe

fipe — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 10:09:05 +0000

I’m liking the humans.txt file a lot. Crediting sources is inherently a good thing and it can help protect against others taking credit for someone else’s work.

By: kumbi

kumbi — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:47:58 +0000

Alex, you’ve just mentioned what I’d been thinking would be a great use for humans.txt – crediting sources.

By: Alexander Dawson

Alexander Dawson — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:07:34 +0000

@Paul: P3P has support in IE, some custom built privacy browsers and search engines – it allows IE6x users to be shown a privacy policy in a dialog box and be able to allow or deny site-wide cookies, overriding default settings.

The combination of Geo.kml and Geo.rdf provides search engines, social networks (etc) who recognise Geo-data the opportunity to give your site location relevancy. And having Geo.kml does indeed provide URL support in Google Earth (as in http://yoururl.com/geo.kml) via file > open.

Humans.txt is more of a “seek me and I’ll be there” file (like a readme.txt or robots.txt) than something that browsers do anything with, but it’s a great clean way to provide credits without stamping details over the site or source – plus .txt files have ubiquitous browser support.

vCard.vcf isn’t supported natively in browsers, but can be made to via extensions (Firefox / Chrome), however the file itself once downloaded can be imported into most address book and email apps, multiple handheld devices (including iOS using third party apps) and a whole load of other tools – it’s exceptionally well supported.

As for PICS, it’s supported by IE natively (alone). But it’s real use comes in that Google support it (via SafeSearch).

Hope that helps :)

By: Rajesh Namase

Rajesh Namase — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:15:58 +0000

Nice article, explained each and every points! Thanks :)

By: Michael Tuck

Michael Tuck — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:09:38 +0000

Another fine article, Alex. I knew about a couple of the files you detail, but not all. You do a great job of presenting these obscure but important snippets of info — thanks!