XFN: Getting Started

Join the XHTML Friends Network in four easy steps:

  1. 1Pick one or more pages to make XFN Friendly

    Do you have a blogroll or links page? Here are some things that can be easily enhanced with XFN:

    ... or anywhere you hyperlink to people you know.

  2. 2Add XFN to your personal hyperlinks

    Edit your blogroll and links pages. For each personal hyperlink, e.g. like <a href="http://tanya.example.org">... add a rel attribute with all of the appropriate values separated by spaces, e.g. <a href="http://tanya.example.org" rel="friend met colleague">...

    Check out the list and meanings of XFN values or use the following XFN quick reference table. All values are optional and may be combined, except some categories only allow at most one from the category, e.g. only one family relationship per person. Hover your mouse over the XFN values in green to see a summary of their meanings.

    XFN quick reference
    relationship categoryXFN values
    friendship (at most one): friend acquaintance contact
    physical: met
    professional: co-worker colleague
    geographical (at most one): co-resident neighbor
    family (at most one): child parent sibling spouse kin
    romantic: muse crush date sweetheart
    identity: me

    You can either type these values by hand or use the XFN Creator to visually create and edit your hyperlinks.

  3. 3Reference the XFN profile

    Let browsers and search engines know that your pages officially support XFN.

    At the top of your blogroll and links pages, you probably have an HTML head tag: <head> Add a profile attribute like this: <head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">

  4. 4Add the XFN Friendly badge

    Now that you've made your pages XFN friendly, let your readers know!

    Download the XFN Friendly badge and add the following code to your blogroll and links pages. Adjust the location of the image as necessary.

    <a href="http://gmpg.org/xfn"> <img src="xfn-btn.gif" alt="XFN Friendly" /> </a>

Congratulations

And that's it! Welcome to the XHTML Friends Network. With any luck your site should be listed soon on the XFN What's Out There? page. If you don't see it show up there within a day or two, email us at founders at this domain and let us know that you've made your site XFN Friendly.

Bonus!

XFN [GMPG]