All about Humans. Humans.txt, Actually

A photo of a team looking at a laptop — Image source: Unsplash

Introduction

You may have heard about robots.txt but have you heard about humans.txt? As the official site states, a humans.txt file is “an initiative for knowing the people behind a website.” This article dives into the humans.txt file a little deeper.

What is humans.txt?

It's a simple .txt file that usually contains a list of all the people who've contributed towards the website. The file is named humans.txt and is placed in the root directory of the website. So, if your website is www.example.com, you'd be able to locate the humans.txt file at www.example.com/humans.txt.

Before we dive into the guidelines for this file and details on implementation, let's take a look at some examples on the internet — clap if you recognise at least one brand. 😄

Examples

Medium

The popular blogging platform has a neat way of using their humans.txt file. Apart from the humour and contact information, Medium uses this file to acknowledge people who report vulnerabilities using their Bug Bounty Disclosure Program.

Netflix

The streaming giant has created, in what appears to be, a large screen with a generic acknowledgement to their staff, and people watching this screen, in their humans.txt file.

Trello

This collaboration tool uses their humans.txt file the most standard way — crediting their team and also a mention to their alumni.

Google

The search engine giant has a very modest message in their humans.txt file and a link to their careers page.

Humans TXT

How could I not include humans.txt's own website as an example? Their humans.txt file mentions their core team and other general acknowledgements. Humans TXT also encourages you to use their humans.txt file as a guideline.

Content

While Humans TXT encourages you to use their humans.txt file as a guideline, you can pretty much add any information you want in here. There are no fixed rules around this file, unlike a robots.txt file. Just ensure the TXT file is saved in UTF-8 encoded format to avoid any issues with special characters in the file.

A super simple version of this file could look something like this —

/* TEAM */
Developer: John Smith
Contact: john.smith [at] example.com
Twitter: @johnsmith

Design: Jane Doe
Contact: jane.doe [at] example.com
Twitter: @janedoe

Implementation

After you've drafted your humans.txt file, it's time to place it in the root directory of your website, as pictured below.

Picture showing where a humans.txt is placed.

Next, place the below <link> tag into the <head> section of your website to reference the humans.txt file you've just added.

<link type="text/plain" rel="author" href="humans.txt" />

After publishing your website, let's say www.example.com, if you head to www.example.com/humans.txt, you should see your file in there.

Summary

Alright, time for a quick recap —

We started with an introduction and then dived into what a humans.txt file actually is.
We then looked at some examples from the internet — some that stand out and some that follow the standard.
Next, we looked at what a super simple humans.txt file can contain.
And finally, we looked at where we would place this file and what code is required to reference this file.

That's it! Thanks for reading.