Wordpress 2.0 Validator XML Need Help Cleaning Up Error Messages plus SEO?
When I run my site through http://validator.w3.org/, I get 43 error messages. I need guidance on how to fix these errors. I would also like to know if there are ways to optimize this site for search engines. Thanks. the site is seniorcitizen.com I also wanted to take advantage of the blank space below the two right columns. can I code a table that i can place below these two columns? how?
Public Comments
- hey NN, I've used the validator many times! what's your site? I validated a page recently and found that much of the html coding styles were not included in the xhtml standard! Understanding their messages is difficult! I joined a list where people asked all sorts of questions... Now I know the w3 validator!
- Thank-you for your question and for reducing the question into a smaller part for me. Hopefully if you are still requiring assistance on the optimization another researcher will be able to help you out. Upon running your homepage through the validator the page came up with 413 error messages. The majority of these are easily fixed as they relate to the same problem repeated throughout the page. The first type of error message that we need to fix is the one happening with the links where you have something like "=beauty&banner=XYZ&f=". An error is being generated because the validator is objecting to the & character. Every occurance of this should be replaced by & the encoded version of &. This will solve the majority of the error messages. This can be fixed easily in the code of your site by using a small piece of additional code. If you are using PHP scripting language for programming your page there is a function called htmlentities() that will do the trick automatically - if you are using an alternative language to script your pages there will be a similar function to fix this. I have linked the manual for the PHP function below: http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php Every time a link is displayed on your site it should be run through the htmlentities function in order to make the link friendly to the validator. This can be easily added to your script before the item is printed out onto the screen. It is difficult to help further here without access to the script that generates your page but hopefully you will understand what to do from the advice I have given you. The next validation error that appears on the list seems to be "there is no attribute border". To remove this error you should remove the border attribute from the code and apply any styling to the border using CSS (for example, border:none). Upon scrolling through the list of validation errors I could find very few that were not related to the above tow problems. Once you have addressed the problems highlighted above please respond to this answer and I will re-run the validation tool to fix any remaining problems. There are excellent quick guides to common errors here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#Common_errors http://www.blackwidows.org.uk/resources/tutorials/xhtml/common-errors.html http://www.devwebproca.com/devwebproca-44-20050722TheImportanceofHTMLXHTMLValidation.html With regards to filling your whitespace between the two columns to the right of the page this is *very* difficult (if not impossible) to do as it spans two different columns which may vary in height (I can think of a way to implement this but not a way that will not be troublesome and actually guaranteed to work every time!). The easiest solution here would be to combine the two columns into one and then tackle the smaller amount of whitespace you are left with. This could be filled with a table or banner advertising. If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to ask for clarification and I will do my best to respond swiftly (I am still on my Easter break so there may be a small delay!). Please also contact me again once you have fixed the two errors indicated above and I will run through solutions for any further error messages on your homepage.
