How to indicate a HTML document is a draft or stub?

Question

Quick question: if I prepare a HTML page as a "draft" or "stub," how would I indicate that in the <head>? A <meta name="x" content = "y"> tag perhaps, where x is {description | keywords}, and y is {stub | draft | public}?

Or perhaps as a RDF-a or JSON-LD declaration?

I want to specify something like draft, stub ("placeholder") and public (i.e. fully formed, published web page intended for public perusal) as metadata, so that I can programmatically search and retrieve those documents, as I prepare a collection of webpages.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '20 at 16:51

2

I would consider encoding this information not in the pages themselves, but as HTTP status codes. Per this SO question, error 503 is appropriate for placeholder or maintenance pages: HTTP status code for temporarily unavailable pages

Another solution would be to include <meta name="robot" content="noindex" /> only on the draft/unfinished/placeholder pages. Assuming that they have little value to a search engine.

answered Oct 05 '20 at 16:51

John Skiles Skinner

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Thank you: I was not sure if there was a standard or ... I'll likely add what I described as a `` in the `` section. – Victoria Stuart Oct 06 '20 at 15:36
Any thoughts on using a `http-equiv` meta tag | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/meta#attr-http-equiv | https://indieweb.org/meta_http-equiv_status | e.g. ``? – Victoria Stuart Oct 06 '20 at 16:29
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I don't know a lot about it, to be honest. It looks like the value "status" is an obscure and little-used extension of that meta tag. I wouldn't expect any kind of software support if you choose to use it, yet you still can use it if you like. Know that "stub" isn't a valid HTTP status code. – John Skiles Skinner Oct 07 '20 at 18:17

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '20 at 16:59

The HTML Standard does not define an element or anything to relay the status of a document. The meta element is the closest available, and the WHATWG version of the standard points to their own list of MetaExtensions, including those pulled from the Dublin Core™ Metadata Initiative.

How to indicate a HTML document is a draft or stub?

2 Answers2