NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Proposal: AD-INFO.TXT file (Ad Registries)
ONLINE-ADS>> Proposal: AD-INFO.TXT file (Ad Registries)
Kenneth C. Jenks (mindseye_at_tale.com)
Fri, 28 Mar 1997 01:49:54 -0600
"Mark J. Welch, Esq." <markwelch_at_ca-probate.com> wrote:
>I would like to make a humble suggestion: why doesn't
>someone create a standard list of data and file descriptor
>for a file of "advertising information" to be maintained at
>each web site?
This is a really good idea. Many times, I've contacted a site that I might
be interested in sponsoring, only to dig in vain for contact and advertising
information. This would put all necessary contact info in a standard place.
How about we make it a standard HTML document, with just a little structure
to it? This way, we can take advantage of some already-existing standards
for HTML (and make the page prettier than flat text).
For example, we could use:
Standard File Name: adinfo.htm
Advertising Information for Mind's Eye Fiction
Organization Name: Mind's Eye Fiction
Organization Handle: MINDSEYEFICTION
Address: 15231 Silverman
Organization Contact: Ken Jenks
City: Webster
State: Texas
State (two-letter): TX
Zip/Postal code (five-digit in US): 77598
Country: United State of America
Country (two-letter): US
Phone: 280 280 0802
Fax: 280 280 9129
E-Mail: MindsEye_at_tale.com
URI: http://tale.com/
Advertising Information URI: http://tale.com/profile/
In this format, standard Web browsers will ignore the <ADINFO>...</ADINFO>
tags, but will display information inside and outside those tags with
whatever formatting you want (like the little graphic at the top). Our
hypothetical ad-registry software would read those ADINFO tags and deal with
the contents correctly. This format minimizes typing when maintaining the page.
We can add an optional VALUE="" tag to allow "invisible" ADINFO fields that
do not display in standard Web brosers, like this:
<ADINFO TYPE="Organization-Name" VALUE="Mind's Eye Fiction"></ADINFO>
The field types so far are:
Organization-Name
Organization-Handle
Organization-Postal
Organization-Contact
City
State
State-Two
Zip-Five
Country
Country-Two
Organization-Phone
Organization-Fax
Organization-Email
URI
Ad-URI
The fields can appear in any order. The explanations should be pretty
self-evident. The Internet standard list of two-letter country codes is at:
ftp://rs.internic.net/netinfo/iso3166-countrycodes
The Organizational-Handle field should contain only alphanumerics (A-Z, 0-9,
underscore), and should be unique. If this catches on, I'll start up a
temporary CGI/database for registering these things to guarantee uniqueness.
I'm sure I'm missing some fields that would be important in this context.
What are they? (GPS coordinates of server? Time zone? Customer demographics?
Number of visitors per fortnight? Hits per picosecond?)
The name of the file, adinfo.htm, should show up as a Content-type:
text/html on almost all Web servers, but it fits in the limited name space
(8.3) of older operating systems so everyone can use the same file name on
every server. For example:
http://tale.com/adinfo.htm
There can be one copy of adinfo.htm in each directory on a server. The
adinfo.htm file can be assumed to apply to all subdirectories unless a
subdirectory contains its own adinfo.htm.
The <TITLE> tags and defacto standards of description and keyword META tags
can be used -- we shouldn't add anything new.
-- Ken Jenks, Editor-in-chief, Mind's Eye Fiction
http://tale.com/ -- The First Web Publisher
MindsEye_at_tale.com
