RE: alta vista and virtualvin.com

Paul Francis (francis@cactus.slab.ntt.jp)
Tue, 4 Jun 96 09:32:42 JST


>
> I think this has been suggested before, but I haven't seen it in this
> thread: The easy place to start would be to contact the principle server
> vendors and explain to them why it would be great if they a) include a
> sample robots.txt in each and every sample site installed from their
> distribution and b) include the whys and wherefores of robots.txt in
> their manuals and help. In fact, this may already be being done by some

Generating robot.txt seems like something that would be appropriate
for automated tools. Just thinking off the top of my head, it
seems it wouldn't be too hard to create a tool that ran on one's
server, and that checked for dynamically created links (say, by
comparing what is in the directory tree against what an html link
produces?), and then automatically updates the robot.txt accordingly.

The server vendors could include this in their software
and put in their advertising that their product is
robot-safe or some such thing...

The server manager wouldn't have to do a thing...

PF