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I'm using a background image (creative commons attribution license) on one of my pages. There was no direction on how to attribute the image. I want to give credit to the source, but since this is a (css) background image, I can't use a title or alt and I can't give the image a caption, so I'm wondering what the best way is. Some things I've thought of are

  • Add a comment in the css file
  • Add a comment in the HTML file
  • Add a 'credits' section in the footer.
  • Add the info in a humans.txt file

I've seen THIS QUESTION, but the "how" remained largely undetermined. Is there a standardized way to do this?

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  • Just a thought - how about adding/ensuring the EXIF data (ie metadata) of the image contains the appropriate credits?
    – davidgo
    Commented Feb 22, 2023 at 20:54
  • @davidgo I suppose I could open the image in Photoshop to see/add EXIF data, but still, that seems like a rather occult way to give credit, the info is not easily accessible to the average user.
    – HomeSlice
    Commented Feb 24, 2023 at 19:07

2 Answers 2

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In a similar situation, I decide to have an attributions page, where I listed each author, linked to their website, and explained what I used. I also thank them at the top.

I am giving them credit for their work so that any visitors can see the attribution. I have seen many sites use this scheme.

I use nofollow links. But you can choose to exclude that attribute.

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  • I was wondering about that approach. Naturally, I don't want the attributions page to come up in search results. But MDN [ developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes/rel ] says that rel=nofollow "Indicates that the current document's original author or publisher does not endorse the referenced document." That is kind of the opposite of what I want to accomplish, so I'm confused.
    – HomeSlice
    Commented Feb 19, 2023 at 1:10
  • Endorsement is your choice. I don't think its warranted unless the author requests it or you have an arrangement with them.
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Feb 19, 2023 at 12:49
  • Well your response is reasonable, so I think I will follow your advice and mark this as answered. Thanks for your time.
    – HomeSlice
    Commented Feb 19, 2023 at 17:43
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I'm not sure how widespread it is, but some sites use a humans.txt file to give credit to the people behind the site. Like robots.txt, it should be put at the root of the site.

The humans.txt site gives a number of additional recommendations. For example, you can put <link rel="author" href="humans.txt" /> in your <head> to make it more discoverable.

Here's an example humans.txt that credits CC works.

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