Website Validation

Clean code means better usability and search engine optimization

For some, validation is a royal pain. For others, website validation exemplifies the ultimate proof that code is poetry.

Why Validate?

search engines can spider a page more easily. An error prone page gives spiders fits.
clean web pages help attract and maintain web visitors
web pages render better
web pages are faster
validation helps coders write better code
validation is a great learning tool for beginning developers
some clients demand standards compliant web pages

What tools can be used?

First and foremost, the tools provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are a good starting place.

Their HTML validator can only check one web page at a time. This is a problem with most validators. For large sites, it becomes difficult to maintain validation without some kind of enterprise wide tool (read: expensive). Most other validators use the W3C validator as their base.

Their CSS Validator checks a websites cascading style sheet to make sure their are no errors. The tool was recently updated in 2005 and it is much stricter. It now produces a laundry list of warnings. While these warnings do not invalidate a CSS file, they do cause beginners to have a small heart attack. Warnings are just warnings. The key thing to correct are the errors!

They also offer an RSS Validator that will assess your websites RSS feed.

There is finally a tool on the market that makes validation quite easy: Total Validator.

Total Validator is an online and a desktop tool that can be used to validate any number of websites. It offers the following five tools:

HTML Validation – Total Validator spiders a complete website and validates EACH page. Woohoo! No more validating a page at a time! Complete website validation is offered only through the desktop tool which costs $35. The online version will check up to 20 pages at one time.
Accessibility – Total Validator will check the website for issues regarding accessibility.
Browser Shots – Unfortunately, because of server and spam issues Total Validator no longer offer browser snap shots.
Spell Check – Woohoo! Spell check your WHOLE website! A life saver.
Link Checker – Total Validator will check your website for all broken links.

This is an impressive tool. The only catch: you have to be responsible enough to run it often. And thats not the tool’s problem .