Blake Perdue - Website & app reviews, and technology & startup commentary
Who Designed That Site?
When browsing the web, I often come across sites that are extremely well designed. Naturally, I want to know who built the sites that capture my attention. However, unless the design firm puts a “designed by …” link on the page, there’s no way to know who designed or built a site. That’s why I’m suggesting web design shops make use of the designer meta tag.
If you don’t know, meta tags are undisplayed lines of code in a web page that hold data like generator, description, and keywords. Here’s the meta tags for my blog.
I’ve added a “designer” tag, which tells you who designed it and how to find them. I plan to use this tag on all the sites I build going forward.
If everyone used this tag, figuring out who built a site would be as simple as viewing the site’s source code. Unfortunately, this tag is not yet widely used and until it is, I will still have to guess and do detective work to figure out who designed that site.
Do you ever wish you knew who designed a site?
Comments
This is a terrific idea! In addition to helping upstart websites, it’s also a boon to designers looking to get credit for their work or a little cash for helping someone with design.
This is an innovative idea. I particularly like that it doesn’t impose on the client’s finished product with a footnote irrelevant to the majority of the site’s users.
It might be even better to set a standard format for name and weblink/email, so this kind of data could be aggregated as a microformat.
Blake – do you know if this is would pass W3C standards? Is there not a predefined set of meta tags you can use?
I was not aware that the “designer” meta tag was valid! I might have to use that on client websites, if they don’t mind 
I don’t really like putting “designed by..” links. If this was widely used, it would be great! I love browsing through great portfolios.
I like this idea but would this really work in real world? what if the website is really bad? Would you still want to know about who built the site?
I think this would be a great idea. It would be nice to be able to contact a designer who has done a great job, but also to help stay clear of someone who’s site design is really bad.
I have seen sites that are lovely and I could never find out who made it. And I know I have been guilty of making sites and not putting any marks on it that I created the design. So I think this is a great idea and think it could catch on. Because what is the worst that could happen, get someone wanting your services?
If people kept the footer links alive it would be even easier – but the normally take them out. It would eventually be great to have a structure way for this info to get included without being able to be removed, but I do not think that is going to happen.
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My name is Blake Perdue. I build stuff on the web. Learn more about me at my portfolio site.Latest Project
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I think this is a great idea. I have come across similar situations, where a site was extremely well designed, and I wanted to get more information about who designed the site. The only option available previously was to send an e-mail to a contact name on the site, and hope that person can find the information for you. That’s not as easy as it sounds, though, because many well designed websites have several contact addresses, and those people may not even know who designed the site. This is a quick and easy way to web site designers to mark their work and advertise for themselves at the same time, as well as allow users to easily locate design information.