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Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 2:43 pm
by hanno
Currently the templates shipped with serendipity have a meta tag like this to indicate the software used:
<meta name="Powered-By" content="Serendipity v.2.0-beta1" />
It seems that the meta tag with name "Powered-By" is a s9y invention. However, there is a standardized meta tag for that use: "generator". It is used by most other web CMS systems and blogs. It is approved by the W3C:
http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/meta
I propose changing all "Powered-By" metatags in themes to "generator" to make s9y more standards compliant.
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:52 pm
by yellowled
hanno wrote:It seems that the meta tag with name "Powered-By" is a s9y invention.
That is technically okay, though. As far as I know, the HTML spec only defines the struture of a meta element, it does not stipulate to use certain meta elements.
hanno wrote:However, there is a standardized meta tag for that use: "generator".
In fact, it would be possible to register extensions to the standard meta data names. “Powered-By” is indeed neither a standard meta data name nor a registered extension.
hanno wrote:I propose changing all "Powered-By" metatags in themes to "generator" to make s9y more standards compliant.
It's a tad harsh to speak of “standards compliant” here. Actually, the W3C validator does not consider “Powered-By” an error or even a warning. That being said, yes, “generator” is more common and kind of a standard for this. (2k11, for instance, uses it already.)
It should be noted that some CMS do not use “generator” deliberately because it offers a simple way to find out the engine (and usually version number) behind a website, which might be used to exploit security issues. Other than that I see no objection to changing it to “generator” for themes shipped with s9y. Might as well do that for additional themes on Spartacus.
YL
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:54 pm
by hanno
Yeah, maybe my wording was a bit overblown. Basically, the HTML meta tag allows any arbitrary kind of values, so you can invent as much of them as you like.
However, if there is already one standardized it makes sense to use it instead of inventing a new one.
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:20 pm
by garvinhicking
Good catch, thanks. Wasn't really aware of this. I just changed this for all internal (2.0/1.7) and external themes.
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 7:30 pm
by yellowled
Just our of curiosity (personally, I don't care), where is displaying the version number configured?
YL
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 9:48 am
by garvinhicking
We have a "expose_s9y" variable, somewhere buried in the global configuration
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:25 am
by yellowled
Seems like it's set in serendipity_config.inc.php, line 113-115.
YL
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 2:13 pm
by garvinhicking
Ah, ok. Then it's a serendipity_config_local.inc.php variable that would need to be set...
We once had our own s9y spider that checked blogs and analyze their versions, I think this is why we didn't want to put this variable configurable into the normal installer. Meanwhile I'm thinking, this might be nice to reveal to users...
Re: Request meta name generator instead of Powered-By
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2014 3:45 pm
by yellowled
garvinhicking wrote:Ah, ok. Then it's a serendipity_config_local.inc.php variable that would need to be set...
That's what I found on a quick grep – it
might be elsewhere as well. Not sure. However, I do think it would be good to have this as a config option as well.
YL