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Before I took up the management of our corporate website, the developer who sold it to us told us that our then current site contained many errors. I have recently run our new site through the validator coming up with 281 errors!
I don't like to see sloppy, bloated code, but I don't know what to allow. The company provided us with a PageBuilder to manage our own content and it is ungainly to use. If it generates bad code on top of the site's main features (which we don't touch), is this standard?
Finally, and I'm sorry we're having so many problems, would you expect to pay extra to have a site backed up daily as opposed to weekly at the host's end?
Thanks, everyone. This forum is brilliant. I seem to get replies that are extremely helpful. Unfortunately, I fall into the category of a little knowledge is dangerous, so I'd like to know what you think..
-Zach
How important is it for a page to contain no errors (as when checked on validator.w3c.org)?
That would all depend on who you ask. ;)
While 100% validation does not appear to be important to the search engines, it is important in the overall sceheme of things.
I would be sure there are no fatal errors. Minor errors probably won't cause much harm but it is good practice to address them anyway.
I have recently run our new site through the validator coming up with 281 errors!
That is a bit on the heavy side. Keep in mind that many of the errors you may be seeing are cascading down the page from errors above. Once you start cleaning up those at the top of the list, many on the bottom of the list will disappear.
I don't like to see sloppy, bloated code, but I don't know what to allow.
Personally I don't allow any errors, no matter how minor they are. There is really no excuse not to clean them up and many can be addressed in a 15-30 minute validation session.
The company provided us with a PageBuilder to manage our own content and it is ungainly to use. If it generates bad code on top of the site's main features (which we don't touch), is this standard?
It appears that any tool that is designed to automate the process of managing content has its flaws. Some more than others. In this case, you try to fix the tool to do what it is that needs to be done. If you can't fix it, you get a different one until you find one that can do it right.
Finally, and I'm sorry we're having so many problems, would you expect to pay extra to have a site backed up daily as opposed to weekly at the host's end?
No! We do backups at least once a day.
Sometimes, maybe we are too hard on ourselves, always trying to come up with squeaky clean code. While the rest of the world doesn't pay that much attention and accepts tag soups of varying flavors without much fuss.
I guess there is a certain degree of tolerance allowable. What that degree is, well, that is up to individual implementors and we can only guess.
