Where to place the humans.txt file if I cannot put it on the site root?

Question

Background

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• I'm building a web application for a client.
• This app will be accessible to the world and will be placed in a directory (e.g., /my-app) in web-root. A subdomain isn't an option as they don't want to cough up the dough for another SSL cert.
• /my-app is the only directory that I'm allowed to touch (unreasonable IT guys).
• I'm using an icon set which requires attribution.
• I've contacted the original author of the icon set and have gotten permission to link back to his work in the THANKS section of a humans.txt file.
• I also feel like I should mention some other people's work. This information combined with the above will probably take up a good 20 lines, so a separate file like humans.txt seems like an ideal place to put this considering that I'll be serving minified markup, CSS, and script files.

Questions

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1. Since I'm not allowed to place a humans.txt file in web-root, (and even if I was, it wouldn't really make much sense to put it there as it only applies to the /my-app portion of the site) is it acceptable to do the following:

   • Create: /my-app/humans.txt
   • Place: <link rel="author" href="//example.com/my-app/humans.txt"> in my markup

2. I'll be serving strict HTML 4.01 and the author value for the rel attribute doesn't seem to be a recognized link type in that specification. Do I need to do anything extra to define the author link type, or is the act of using it enough?

I don't even know if there are any non-spider tools that actually use this file at the moment, but I'd like to minimize the chance of this not working in the future when something does come along.

Dyscrasia

Does it need to be strict HTML 4.01? The doctype is really only (other than for validating) for forcing the browser in to strict mode. – Adrieneadrienne

@gms8994: No, it doesn't have to be, but I'd prefer to keep it strict. Any particular reason you asked this? I'm just starting out with web development, so I don't know a lot of things yet. – Dyscrasia

You could just go with an HTML5 doctype and HTML, and browsers will handle most everything properly. Obviously, YMMV, but the HTML5 doctype seems to be the "standard" going forward. – Adrieneadrienne

@gms8994: Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to explore this further. I need to support IE >=6 and also want a usable app if JavaScript's disabled. Is it possible to have IE 6-8 render basic HTML 5 markup correctly if a JS fix isn't available? – Dyscrasia

I'm pretty sure HTML5 without the new tags is supported by most browsers. – Crucifix

Answer 1

1. I think it is ok to put the file in the applications own directory, since it clarifies that it is specific to the content inside the directory and not all the other stuff you might find in the root directory.

2. Of course it would be nice if there are 0 errors in HTML strict mode. However this is one situation where you have to decide if you want to

   • keep up with the standard and not insert the meta tag (maybe put it in a comment or as a real link in a credits page)
   • ignore the standard, because the standard is nice but not the holy grail (there are quite worse errors you can make than that)
   • chose another Doctype, which allows you to use the meta tag you want, but to test again if all browsers render the new Doctype correctly

However I can not make this decision for you ;)

Chinchy

Pretty much what I thought. Re: standards compliance; I work almost exclusively in C and C++ so ignoring a standard in this case goes against everything I've been doing on a daily basis for quite some time now. Life on the edge, man. =) – Dyscrasia