@clarabelle
The robots.txt file in a PHP project is used to instruct search engine robots on which pages or files of the website should be crawled and indexed. It is a text file that is placed in the root directory of the website and is publicly accessible.
The robots.txt file uses a simple syntax and allows webmasters to define rules for different search engine robots. It can specify which directories or files should not be crawled, which search engines are allowed to access the site, and other instructions.
For example, if you have a directory containing sensitive information or private data that you don't want search engines to index, you can include a rule in the robots.txt file to block access to that directory. Similarly, certain search engine robots can be allowed or disallowed from accessing the site altogether.
The robots.txt file is not a foolproof method of restricting access to certain areas of a website, but it is commonly used by web developers to control and guide search engine indexing.