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At one point my new site (not new anymore ) was 100% valid with the exception of one url which had a ? in it. It was a nice feeling but the reality is that it just makes life more complicated, i built (re-developed from prior attempts) a cms with php/mysql and a whack of javascript, and when it comes to pulling that info out of the database onto your page one finds that an array of errors pop up that cant be helped, for example, many of my pages have tags in them that are in caps and img tags that dont close (Steven_AS actually sorted that one out for me). But it didnt affect my rankings at all.

As a matter of fact, even though my site is buggy and invalid it is still on the up n up. I think that if you were going to spend hours on perfecting code for your site it would be best spent perfecting your css so that your content and images load in A) an order that gives people something to focus on while the rest is loading B) keeps your page content close to the top of your source so that spiders etc can get to it as they get to the page, that way by the time the bot ascertains that its going through crap it really will be going through crap and not just skimming the top of your content. 

Do bare in mind though, it is just good practice to keep your website as valid (clean code) as possible, in no way am i saying it must be ignored - imagine the name you will get once your clients hire different people to work on their sites and find out that the reason their site isnt ranking isnt because their product sucks but because you laid 1000's of lines of spaghetti code in its rear. you guys know who you are ---- > wheres the point finger thingy?
--- fortunately people who do that find it hard to stick around SR  ---

Having come from a programming background where compilers/interpreters are less tolerant of mistakes, I may have become a little obsessive about coding; so I try to clean up any coding errors I come across.  I believe it to be a good practice to keep up even if it's not required, but I've backed off from harassing others who don't.  I do suggest people at least try to clean up the big errors though.

Im with Northie on this one.
it's all about the benjimins!

if errors are stopping people from viewing any of my sites (and therefore stopping them from giving me their money) then I'll fix it using validation to help find the errors

other than that, i couldn't give a monkeys.

As for xHTML, maybe Im way behind the times on this one, but that still doesn't concern me. All mine are HTML, thats it, no x.
I use some of the standards (lowercase tags etc) but thats only for my own convenience. granted, xHTML is important for mobile viewing, but Im not even concerned with that.
If it doesn't increase my profits, i'll find something better to do with my time.

I personally prefer all my code to validate, and will spend the time fixing errors and warnings.

Why?

Well, besides the obvious, I am proud of my work and like to be able to say "Yes, all the code I wrote conforms to accepted and published standards."

Means nothing for money, unless its an issue like mentioned above.

Could someone remind me?  Where do we go to check our code???

Thanks!

Basket Lady

Oh matte! Now you're pulling our legs!

As a matter of fact, basketlady, when I first saw your post an hour or so ago, I had a quick look and found your home page to validate perfectly. Well, I said to myself "Why does this lady need a validation tool?" Then I saw several warnings on another page.

Doesn't matter, though. Your pages work OK, don't they?

Anyway, if you want to validate your code, one way is to install the HTML Tidy plugin for Forefox, just like matte says.

Trouble is, basketlady, next thing we know, you'll have all sorts of questions about appeasing this confounded plugin that keeps complaining, quite unnecessarily, about your website.

Now, I'd reckon that with a basic website, such as yours, unless you are having trouble with consistent display in IE or some such, that you forget the silly old validators and their silly little game. Just get on with life and be happy.

And whatever you do, don't put one of those silly looking W3C validation icons at the bottom of the page. "Why," you ask. Because it's silly.

Besy wishes,
Laurie.

You can get the FireFox plugin here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo … sions/1843
Use version 1.2.0b7 if you're using FF3, or version 1.05 if you're using FF2

I can't believe this subject is being discussed. Bad code is just to risky as well as it makes the creator look very amateur or worse yet lazy. Different browsers don't work consistently with perfect code -- God only knows what they will do with bad code. Validating code is just the start. You need to test on multiple browsers and window dimensions. I also use a couple of web SEO validators to help with content keyword relevancy.  The ones I use most are http://raven-seo-tools.com/seo-analyzer/ and http://www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html.

I am a self-confessed validation addict and I validate to W3c 'HTML Strict', W3c CSS and W3c Link checking.

In addition, I also validate my pages to conform to W3c 'WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Guidelines'. I believe this is most important to Google and since I started doing this my site, without any other form of promotion, has built up to PR5 on the index page and PR4 or PR3 on all other pages. The site has also built up to serving approximately 800,000 subject pages a year to human visitors. I just love Google.

If anyone is interested I wrote a page on the subject of validation which can be viewed here:
http://www.web-wise-wizard.com/html-tut … sting.html

I personally would recommend that any serious web author should learn the techniques involved in learning to validate their work. In my opinion, the investment in time should pay dividends.

Last edited by Web-Wise-Wizard (2008-08-20 01:42:21)

Hi Steven,

Nice site and full marks for the validation you do.

Your comment about Google's pages not validating is well founded but I do not think they practice what they preach. A case of the left hand not bothering to coordinate it's actions with the right hand.

I also agree that I did not see a great change in Google's attitude to my site until my pages started conforming to WCAG2 Accessibility Guidelines. However, once all my pages met these accessibility guidelines then every page on the site achieved it's own independant Google page ranking, a minimum of PR3 and my Web traffic started increasing in a big way.

The only problem is that your x/HTML validation has to meet 'Strict' standards (not transitional) but I have validated your Home page and you are not very far away at all. Try the following link:
http://valet.webthing.com/access/htnorm … slt=listed

The number of warnings you have is minimal in comparison to the number of errors I had when I started validating to WCAG2 Accessibility Guidelines.