We all love to take credit for the work that we are proud of and there is nothing wrong with that. Whenever we work on the project, we put our team/company name in the footer of the website, or in the about section. However, this doesn’t take into consideration the members of the team who worked on the project. These members can be Designers, Developers, SEOs, QAs, etc. To attribute the team behind the project, there is a thing called humans.txt
What is humans.txt?
Humans.txt is a great initiative for listing the individuals who worked behind a project. It’s an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. Basically, it is just a .txt file that contains information about individuals and their roles in a particular project.
Humans.txt Example
/* TEAM */
Project Lead: John Smith
Contact: johnsmith [at] gmail.com
Twitter: @johnsmith
From: New York, USA
UI Designer: Tim Jacob
Contact: timjacob [at] gmail.com
Twitter: @timjacob
From: New York, USA
Project Lead: Jennifer Jaine
Contact: jenniferjaine [at] gmail.com
Twitter: @jenniferjaine
From: Toronto, Cananda
/* SITE */
Last update: 2020/10/05
Language: English
Doctype: HTML5
IDE: VSCode
Technologies: Jekyll, Python
Should we always humans.txt?
Humans.txt is completely optional. It is not related to SEO. But it is a way to tell the world about the individuals who worked hard behind the website.
Who to mention on humans.txt?
We can mention anyone on the humans.txt. We can attribute our designers, developers, SEOs, Project Manager, .etc. On an Open Source project, we can add all the contributors in the humans.txt by automating it through CI/CD.
Where should I add humans.txt?
Humans.txt lives at the root of the website. We can add a <link> tag in the <head> of our website.
<link type="text/plain" rel="author" href="http://example.com/humans.txt">
We hope that you will use the humans.txt in your current or upcoming project and attribute your team for what they do. Cheers!
