validation problem..

affiliate product links

[dauction]

Ok..been having trouble with placement..about the last thing is a validation problem with my affiliate link code on my products (images)(to link back to the suppler/product)

I am using FP2000 which is screwy anyways...

Can I have 2 pages of my home page...so the one that validates has a better chance in ranking..on THAT page all the product image links would instead be pure html links to my second "home page" from which they click on the products again(with the screwey affilite links that wont validate) and are directed to the order form..? the second page would "look" almost identical but the code would be substantially different..

So basically HomePage.com has a better chance of ranking...you actually find the site/page..you see a product you lie and click on it...which takes you to an almost identical page ..this time under the image is text that says to price product or to order click on product ..

and this time it takes you to the affiliate suppier" order form..
thats a long ways around I know but wouldnt my site then rank higher (all things considered) without all the "affiliate" code ?

or how can I clean up my affilate links so that they will work AND validate..

any ideas..

[ergophobe]

What do the affiliate links look like? Is it a url encoding problem (in other words, you should be encoding & and other characters).

Tom

[dauction]

<b><font color="#A40000">SIGNS<br>
<a href="http://www.****.com/asp/sp.asp?PD=10086369&amp;RFID=my id"><img alt="posters with ***.com" src="http://images.***.com/images/PRODUCTS/regular/10086000/10086369.jpg" border="1" width="185" height="141"><br>
</a></font></b>
<font size="2"><b><i>Latest Movie release SIGNS</i></b></font>

Ok the *** is the supplier,

the validation problem seems to be with "&amp;" and with "RFID" which is nothing more than my referal ID..

using bcentrals submission service I get a warning on these..

Have to include to be paid..well with the RFID anyways..not sure what the "&amp;" is

[dauction]

BTW..erophobe..should I just ditch FP2000 !LOL

I need a good basic wysiwg editor..my html isn't the best .. but I can usually track down most problems

thanks..

[ergophobe]

What DTD are you trying to validate to?

SoI just ran your code through the W3C validator and it validates just fine to HTML 4.01 Transitional.

If you want to validate to HTML 4.01 strict or XHTML you'll need to (depending on exactly which version you're shooting for) get rid of the font tags, make sure all inline tags are properly contained (e.g. put your text in <p> or something like that), have closing tags (e.g. <br /> and so on).

In the image tag you'll need to get rid of border and other deprecated attributes. Moslty you'll need to replace font tags and presentational attributes with CSS.

not sure what the "&amp;" is

It's an HTML entity that evaluates to &.

param1=1&param2=2

is not legal, you need to use the entity to get it to validate.

should I just ditch FP2000

I don't know anything at all about FP.

Tom