Validate Your Blog

You have a great blog, using the state-of-the art theme and utilizing a decent css coding. Is that all? I believe the biggest challenge is getting the design fully compliance as per W3C standard. Don’t be surprised as even experienced bloggers failed miserably when it comes to validations.

“If they can’t make it, why should I?” Now, let us go to this point. There must be reasons as webmasters put their best effort to comply with the standards. Just because your blog looks good on your screen doesn’t mean that all the coding is accurate or that it will look good on someone else’s screen. To add salt to the wound, what looks perfect in Firefox does not guarantee the same in Internet Explorer. I experienced it myself thus I know what I am talking.

For a jump start, begin by checking at least your xhtml and css codes against the W3 validator. Keep in mind, WordPress uses xhtml, not html.

W3C HTML Validation Service
An HTML validator simply checks the correctness of your document against the declared DOCTYPE. The HTML validator will return a list of errors according to the chosen HTML DOCTYPE. If your document has no errors, it will return a “This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!” message, or something similar.

W3C CSS Validation Service
As with the W3C CSS Validation Service, you can check the validity of your style sheet. You can check the validity of external style sheets called by your document. Just type the URL and it’s done. If your document has no errors, it will return a “Congratulations! No Error Found.” message, or something similar.

So, what are the benefits of having your blog validated? Perhaps the facts below will enlighten you.

  • Web Site Accessibility - validating your html code helps to pinpoint areas of potential blockage that could prevent search engine spiders or visitors from accessing your website.
  • Search engine friendly pages - clean and simple code enables search engines to spider your pages more quickly and completely.
  • Faster Loading - if your web page contains html errors it will take a longer time for the search engines to spider it, therefore slowing the loading time.
  • Easier to update and maintain web site - with no mistakes in your html code it is easier and faster to make changes to your web pages. For web site designers, this means you will save time and money when maintaining clients’ sites.
  • Browser compatibility - validated code ensures your site is compatible with the current browsers and future browsers. Current browsers will continue to update their rules and future browsers will make sure they are html compliant.

I have mine validated but failed as well due to codes used in the comments as described below. I’ll take a look at it later. Anyone has the idea?

Line 146, Column 29: document type does not allow element “div” here; assuming missing “li” start-tag.

<div class="commentauthor">

As for css, it was validated as well but since I’m using php compression, thus it’s no longer recognized by W3C (but it still is!)

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Posted on: June 8, 2008 | Under Blogging Basics 
 

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