I recently decided to get some consistency in the footer links I was adding to the website I designed and coded. I wasn’t sure whether to use “designed by”, “built by”, “developed by” etc. so I created a post on forrst.com asking fellow designers and developers their thoughts. I was expecting a general consensus and I got quite the opposite. Most comments advised against using the links and there was some real snobbery about the use of footer links.
There seems to be a movement towards removing footer links on websites. At first I was shocked and didn’t understand, but as the helpful forrstrs helped me realise, web designs are less about bragging rights and more about the client.
I always add a little information within the CSS on a website, explaining who created the code, but there is also a pretty cool way to add more relevant information, humans.txt. The idea explained on http://humanstxt.org/. I’m currently adopting this method for current projects (including this site http://2fgp.co.uk/humans.txt).
It seems to be quite a hot topic at the moment so I’d really be keen to hear your views on it.
Like the idea of the humans.txt file but see absolutely nothing wrong with a link in a footer – if the client doesn’t mind.
Totally agree. I think removing footer links are nothing more than some designers wanting to be different and saying they don’t “need” to add them because it’s all about the client is utter bull.
If a client doesn’t object, we always add a link and we’ve recently started adding humans.txt files to sites too but not because they’re alternative to footer links, because they provide technical information that might be of interest to other fellow developers.
J.
I’m glad you’ve said that James, I may well do both and just the humans.txt if the client does not want a footer link. It’s really interesting to hear views that back my original views up, the forrst comments were unanimous in removing footer links. It seems an elitist way to behave, as I said on forrst, an artist signs their work so why can’t a web designer!
We’ve won a few projects from footer links. CSS comments are great if another developer is checking out the code, but your average Joe wouldn’t know where to start with source code. They’re also good inbound links for SEO purposes.
Yeh, I had the same view initially, but thought I’d give this a try, I may well introduce them back in to my projects again in the future, once I’ve rebranded :)