Metadata in the <head>

Hello! Not too sure if this is where I’m supposed to post a new question. Apologies, if it isn’t.

I’m currently learning about meta data and the head. The word play and vocabulary used is a bit misleading for me. In the explanation it says “author” of the document, but are they
referring to the coder, the actual person that did the code/mark up for the page, or are they referring to “author” aka the person that created the content for/within the document, i.e. the person you’re creating the webpage for?

Here’s an example of what I mean from “what’s in the head? Metadata in html”:

“Specifying an author is useful in a few ways: it is useful to be able to work out who wrote the page, if you want to contact them with questions about the content. Some content management systems have facilities to automatically extract page author information and make it available for such purposes.”

Which author are they talking about,? The mark up author/coder, or the author of the content/the person you’re building the webpage for?

Pretty sure it’s the coder, but I don’t want assume. Sorry if it’s a tedious question.

Thanks!!

Hi jaysand,

This is a really interesting question - thanks for bringing it up. I think it is always good to question the vocabulary we use, as we take these things for granted too much.

when we say “author” in web development, we always mean “the person who coded the page”, e.g. the web developer, rather than the author of the content (they might be the same person, but more often are not).

I had a follow up question but I was able to figure it out! Thank you!