Last update: February 21 2019
You can use META tags for more than promoting your site on search engines.
META tags can be used for adding:
All these tags are placed within the HEAD element. Some of these will be of help to you as a web developer, but even as a web designer it’s useful to know these.
Credits
With META tags, you can identify yourself as the author of the document. The tag for this is very straight forward:
<meta name="author" content="Nora Tol" />
You can also let people know you own the copyright of the page. You do so, by using this:
<meta name="copyright" content="Nora Tol" />
Caching
Whenever you visit a website, files are temporarily stored in your browser. The next time you visit, some of these files are loaded from the browsers memories instead of the server. This is called caching. It’s to speed up the loading time of websites.
However, it sometimes causes problems.
For instance, what if there’s a new version of your website and you want to see your changes? Sometimes, caching can prevent you from seeing them. Well, the following META tag allows you to set an expiration date for the caching of your website:
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="Mon, 25 Feb 2019 08:21:57 GMT" />
When the expiration date is reached, the browser will look for the latest version on the server. So when you make sure the date is somewhere in the past, it will always look for the latest version.
You could also completely disable caching:
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />
Fixed Window Target
You can also set a window-target. This could come in handy when you are using a pop up window or lightbox (a pop up window that covers the rest of the site with a darker overlay). In this sample, the target is set to always overwrite the parent window with whichever link.
<meta http-equiv="window-target" content="_parent" />
Other values you can use with the CONTENT-attribute are: _top, _ self or a frame / windows name.
Redirect To Different Page
Pages get moved. It’s a hassle, but it is what it is. You can direct people to a new location using this code:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url=https://www.noratol.com" />
This will refresh the location 3 seconds after the page was opened. It will redirect to the URL https://www.noratol.com. The delay in redirection will provide you time to explain to people why they are being redirected. Keep in mind though, that search engines don’t like redirects….. I’m just saying.