Robots.txt and Humans.txt

Most web developers have and always will create a robots.txt file, but a new and more fun file is the humans.txt file, and it is more interesting.

Lets start with some background, the robots.txt file is a plain text file that lives in the root of all web sites these days, that informs the search engines’ crawlers what to index and what to ignore of a particular site. So the robots.txt file is very useful when directing the robot visitors, but the new kid on the block is humans.txt.

Humans.txt is just another plain text file that lives in the root of the web site. But this one exists for a completely different reason, this file tells about the actual people behind the site. The humans.txt file could contain anything, such as who designed the site, who supports the hardware the site lives on, information that pertains to the site itself (social media profiles, standards, platform, etc) or even a message to join the team.

I find this concept very interesting, so I went exploring for who has implemented a humans.txt file on their site, below are a few I found.

Google

Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and 
others in many different sites across the globe. It is updated continuously, and 
built with more tools and technologies than we can shake a stick at. If you'd like to 
help us out, see google.com/jobs.

Perishable Press

/* SITE */

	Site name:  Perishable Press
	Site URL:   http://perishablepress.com/
	Web design: Jeff Starr
	Contact:    http://perishablepress.com/press/contact/
	Twitter:    @perishable
	Location:   Washington State, US
	Built with: WordPress, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery

Mad Scientist Technologies

/* SITE */
  Site name:  Mad Scientist Technologies
  Site URL:   http://madscitech.com/
  Web Design: Chris Holbrook 
  Contact:    http://madscitech.com/about/contact/
  Twitter:    @madscitech
  Location:   Kinderhook, Illinois, United States
  Stardards:  XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS3
  Built with: WordPress, PHP, jQuery 
  Software:   PSPad, VIM, Adobe Photoshop CS2
  Language:   English

As you can see a humans.txt file is not difficult to write or implement, and it tells the world – at least anyone that is interested – about the “Humans” that work to bring ‘this’ site to life. So consider adding a humans.txt file to your site, to tell the world who is standing behind that site of yours!

What is your opinion of the Humans.txt file, is it a good idea or just a waste of time? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Further Reading