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FAQ answers for webmastersFAQ 1.1.How do I label my site?How you add your ICRA label to your website depends on how you construct your site as a whole. Therefore for the most appropriate advice, please select the option that best suits you from the list below:
Using a web design toolWeb design tools are there to make it easy to create a website. Most of the time you don't need to worry about the code behind the page you're creating. However, adding an ICRA label does involve copying and pasting your label directly into the source code.If your web design tool allows you to add something to every page of your site automatically, please use it - ideally labels should be included on every page and it's a lot easier if the machine does the hard work for you! However you access it in your web design tool, get to the source code of your site. Then follow the basic instructions below. Basic instructionsThe simplest and most common aim is to label your whole site with the same label. In this case, your label will look similar to this:<meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1 This label declares that everything on the (fictitious) site at www.example.org has "none of the above" in all sections of the ICRA questionnaire. Your own label will, of course, quote your domain name and encode whatever rating is appropriate for your site. Please note: when creating a label for a whole site like this, the URL should just be the domain name of the site. The label generator will strip out strings such as /index.htm and trailing slashes at the end of your URL when you apply for a gen true label. Copy and paste your label into the head section of all the pages on your website. That is, between the <head> and </head> tags in the source code. If you use a template for your pages then this should be easy. That's it - your site is labelled! Next steps:If you so choose, you can add a text link that declares that you have labelled with ICRA. Many sites have some sort of "small print" links at the bottom of the home page, perhaps to a privacy statement. You could add a "Labelled with ICRA" text link in similar fashion. Please link to https://icra.org/labelv02.html. NB: that's zero two, not oh two.Words like "approved by ICRA" or "rated by ICRA" are expressly forbidden. The Internet Content Rating Association does NOT approve or disapprove of any site, neither do we rate sites. We provide a platform for webmasters to label their own sites according to our rating system. As an alternative, you can add an ICRA logo to your site. A variety of buttons has been produced to take account of the enormous diversity of web sites and the fact that in the US, "Labelled" is spelt with a single "l". Click the link below then choose the logo that best suits your site. To save an image to your hard drive using Windows, right click on the chosen image, Mac users should hold down the Ctrl key and click as normal. Either way, you should then select "Save Picture As..." and save the image in the same location as the other images on your site. You can then incorporate the ICRA logo into your site as you would any other graphic. Again, please link to https://icra.org/labelv02.html. To see the available ICRA logos, please click here. Related topics:FAQ 1.2 Do I really have to add the label into every page?Almost certainly yes. In order for a filter to recognise a resource as being labelled, whether it be a page or an element within a page such as an image or external script file, one of two things must be true:
The second condition can only be achieved by using a "gen true" label. This is explained in FAQ 1.3. Filtering software should not look anywhere else. There is no "default location" for labels. Therefore, if a visitor to your site lands on a page without a label, it will be unable to classify it. If you use a template for your pages, make sure you include the label in it! Related topics:FAQ 1.3 How can I control what a label covers?By default, a label applies to the file (the page) that carries it. If a web page contained the label below in the header section of its HTML then that page alone would be labelled.<meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1 However, you usually want to include the images and other elements embedded within the page. This label won't do that. It's attached to the file that carries it and no other. So, you need to tell the filter "hang on to this label and apply it to some stuff that's coming behind me." This is achieved through the generic (gen) flag thus: <meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1 This label will be cached (held in memory) by the filter and applied to other resources that come from the example.org site. More technically, if the URI begins with the string quoted in the 'for' statement, the label can be applied. Note that it is only a string and has no particular meaning. URIs at http://subdomain.example.org are NOT covered. It is also possible to set the generic flag to false thus: <meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1 This label explicitly declares that it is to be applied only to page.htm on the example.org website. Any label carrying a gen true flag should be cached by a filter for the online session. Filters should not hold labels in long term memory. How multiple labels for a given site are handled and prioritized is discussed in FAQ 1.4 Related topics:FAQ 1.4 How do I label different sections and individual pages?You may have any number of labels on a website. The section or page to which each label applies is specified in its 'for' statement. Thus you might have labels that look like this:<meta... details omitted for clarity The first label above states that everything on the example.org website has none of the elements in the ICRA vocabulary. The 2nd one says that various types of nudity and sexual material may be found at URLs beginning http://www.example.org/branch. When deciding which rating to apply to a given resource, the filter will use the one with the longest matching string in the 'for' statement. Therefore http://www.example.org/branch/page.html is labelled as containing some nudity and sexual material whilst http://www.example.org/another/page.html is labelled as having none. If you want to label a specific page with a rating all of its own then you should use a gen false label like this: <meta... details omitted for clarity The label states that the specific page (message_board.html) has none of the elements in the ICRA questionnaire but it does contain moderated chat that is suitable for children and teens. It will not be cached so it can only appear on the page to which it relates. However, it will be given priority over any gen true labels already held in cache. It is possible to omit all the gen true|false for "URL" elements. In this case the rating will be applied to the resource carrying it, whatever its URL. This is useful for portable documents and where labels are delivered automatically with all files through server configuration. See the professional website labelling advice for more details. NB. Internet Explorer's Content Advisor does not adhere to the PICS standard on this point and generally applies labels with no generic flag to any URL it comes across! Should every label go on every page?No. Label(s) need only be included on the page or pages to which they apply. However, no harm is done by labels appearing on pages to which they do not apply.Related topics:FAQ 1.5 How do I label a site that uses frames?If your site uses frames, the simplest way to proceed is to put a label that covers the whole site in the page that defines the frameset. Your code might look something like this:<html> Since the frameset is always loaded before the pages that go into it, the site is fully labelled and you won't need to label the individual pages. If you label the pages, but don't label the frameset, the site will always show as unlabelled because the first file loaded has no label. Related topics:FAQ 1.6 How do I label elements pulled from other websites such as banner ads?It is possible to include labels for resources pulled from other domains but you will need to specify which other domains should be covered. For example, if a page at www.example.org includes an image pulled in from www.example_2.org, the label would look like this:<meta... details omitted for clarity Banner ads can be labelled in this way; however, typically they use many different servers. Look at the source code for any page on this website and you'll see that we include a lot of different domains even though we have a single advertising agency. Unfortunately there is no way to shortcut this at present, however we do try to make it as easy as possible. The label generator includes the option of writing a list of extra domains relevant to your website. If you use this feature, the label you receive will cover those domains and give them the same rating as your own site. FAQ 1.8 has more to say on this. Related topics:FAQ 1.7 What's the most efficient way to write multiple labels?A website may include as many labels as necessary but if you have several, you might want to keep your bandwidth down by putting all your labels together and cutting out unnecessary dulpication. Imagine that our example site needed the following three labels:Label 1<meta http-equiv="pics-label" This label declares that none of the elements in the ICRA questionnaire are present on the example.org website. Label 2<meta http-equiv="pics-label" This label says that the example website includes unmoderated chat facilities in the www.example.org/chat section. Label 3<meta http-equiv="pics-label" This label declares that content pulled from www.banner_ads.org will have none of the elements in the ICRA questionnaire. Each of the three labels is carried in its own meta tag and these can be included in this way. However, notice that each label begins with the same sequence: <meta http-equiv="pics-label" and ends with )'> To increase efficiency, you can concatenate the multiple labels into one meta tag by only quoting these sequences once. The detailed structure is shown in the example below. The three labels are highlighted in different colours whilst the common elements are left un-highlighted. <meta http-equiv="pics-label" You may include as many labels as you like in one meta tag (or HTTP header). Full details of the syntax of all the elements of the labels is given in the professional website labelling document. The label generator can help to do this for youThe label generator allows you to add extra domain names to your own to cover things like banner ads, sites with multiple domain names etc. If you use this feature, you will receive a label that is concatenated in this way. FAQ 1.8 has more to say on this.Related topics:FAQ 1.8 My website has multiple domain names. How should I proceed?Many websites have multiple domain names, most commonly with and without the www prefix, although some sites have many more (this site has 8 domain names pointing to it). Equally commonly, sites may include images and banner ads pulled from other domains.There are two methods of handling this when labelling the site:
The second option is detailed in the professional website labelling document. The first and more straightforward method is described below. When you visit the label generator, you're asked to give the URL of the site to be labelled. Immediately below that you can add in extra domain names if you wish, as shown in the example below:
However you answer the remaining questions on the form, a label will be generated that will apply the same rating to the other domains as well. The label you get back might look something like this: <meta http-equiv="pics-label" It's longer, yes, but it does more! Related topics:FAQ 1.9 My site has an automatic redirect. How should I proceed?Some personal web sites may have a nice domain name like "http://www.reallygoodname.com" which actually redirects people to an address like "http://www.bigisp/membersarea/something/~findusifyoucan".Ideally BOTH sites should be labelled. If you have access to the redirect site - the one with the nice name - then you can fill in the questionnaire and get a label for it. Something like: <meta http-equiv="pics-label" And put this in the head section of the default file at that site - the one that redirects visitors. If you don't have access to this page (and many people don't), then you cannot label it. You will, however, be able to label your actual site. Whether you have access to your redirect site or not, you do of course have access to your actual site. You should give "http://www.bigisp/membersarea/something/~findusifyoucan" as the URL when you fill in questionnaire, since the label applies to the site quoted within it, and by the time visitors get to your site, that's what they're looking at, not http://www.reallygoodname.com. Related topics and links:FAQ 1.10 How do I test my label?ICRA provides a tool that visits your site and tests the labels. If there are problems, the tool attempts to diagnose the situation and provide useful feedback. There are three basic types of response:Green light: Congratulations - as far as the label tester is able to tell, your site is fully labelled with ICRA. Amber light: The actual URL you entered is labelled; however, there are some elements such as images or external files that are not labelled. FAQ 1.6 probably has the information you need to solve this. Red light: Either the label tester is unable to find any labels at all, or the labels found have some errors. The syntax of the labels is very specific and a small error can lead to the label being rejected. Related topics and linksFAQ 1.11 How does filtering software read ICRA labels?The diagram below shows how a PICS-compliant filter, such as ICRAplus, reads labels.
Some points to note:The term gen true is discussed in FAQ 1.3.How a filter decides which of several available labels to apply to a given URL, i.e. what is "the most specific label available", is discussed in FAQ 1.4. Microsoft Internet Explorer's Content Advisor follows a similar pattern but with two important differences:
These differences mean that Content Advisor is not compliant with the PICS standard. Furthermore, assumptions were made during the design of its user interface that make it difficult, although not impossible, to use with the ICRA system. Related topics and links:FAQ 1.12 How do I "decode" an ICRA label?Within an ICRA label, the actual content rating for the site is encoded in parentheses, for example:r (cz 1 lz 1 nz 1 oz 1 vz 1) codes for "none of the above" in all the sections of the ICRA questionnaire. To decode all the terms used the ICRA system, please consult the decoder by clicking here. FAQ 1.13 My HTML editor has swapped "<" and ">" for "<" and ">" in my label. Why and what should I do?We sometimes hear from web authors who find that when they copy and paste their ICRA label (meta tag) directly from the web page at the end of the rating questionnaire, the HTML editor they're using swaps the "<" and ">" enclosing the tag into their HTML character references ("<" and ">" for "less than" and "greater than").The software assumes that you don't know much about editing HTML directly and therefore you can't possibly want to carry out the operation you've just done - well, you do! Just change the "<" back into a "<" and the ">" into a ">". FAQ 1.14 Can I label my site using XML technologies rather than PICS?We're working on this! See First draft of RDF-based labels FAQ 1.15 Where can I find the ICRA logos for use on my website?To see the complete set of available ICRA logos, please click here.
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