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To validate your code you could use the w3c's validator, or a free program like "CSE HTML Validator Lite".
To fix code automagically you could use "html tidy" which is very powerful, but may take a bit of time to get used to. HTH
My personal rule of thumb is that if the code is good enough for the common browsers to display it is good enough for the search engines to index.
We do not do site reviews, and in any case the URL posted in the profiles of new members are not displayed for others. But if you post the first few lines of diagnostic output we may be able to help you get started.
One guess: Do many of the messages say something like "&XYZ invalid attribute"? If you have alot of URLs with ampersands in them they can really mess up the validator output. The problem is that "&forum", to give an exapmle, is invalid HTML, the correct form is "&forum".
if you have a hundred URLs each with thre ampersand you will get 300 error messages :)
So, I wouldn't worry-- just take a deep breath and start from the beginning. It's not as bad as it looks, and you learn a *lot*.
is this suppose to be my valid DOCTYPE? One validator said it looke liked HTML Prioretary ( this was Tidy) and another said DOCTYPE HTML 4.01 Transitional. I am so confused what it is and do all my pages that I create have to say the same generator at top?
Gosh I wish someone could take a look at my source code. Went from 394 WARNINGS to only 92 now by Tidying it up, but also said "1" error as well. What do the warnings mean. should I give them as much weight?
Also, do not- I repeat: Do Not let the software autocorrect the html for you. It can create a worse problem.
Lastly, create a backup of your website and place it in another folder, somewhere out of harm's reach.
Gosh I wish someone could take a look at my source code.
We have rules here for a variety of very valid reasons. And now that your questions are getting more specific we can start answering them!
The generator tag just tells whoever cares (nobody, in most cases) what software generated the page. I am pretty sure that there is a switch in Tidy to disable outputting a generator tag, but since it is harmles ...
The DOCTYPE is something that you must put in. Some validators will take a guess, and 4.01 Transitional is what they often guess. It is probably appropriate in your case.
I would put it in explicitly, before the <html>tag:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"><html lang="en">
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><link rel="StyleSheet" href="main.css" type="text/css">
<title>Your Title</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="your keywords go here">
<meta name="description" content="Description of content of this page">
</head><body>
You are doing quite well, down to 100 warnings from 400!
If you show us the first few warnings we will probably be able to help you figure out what is wrong. Did you check my suggestion about the entities and ampersands?
Thanks for everyones help. But oh my goodness, could this get anymore confusing?....I sware I do not have <meta> in the body elements or <head> as part of my body element: Here are just a few of the warnings-
1 Warning: HTML DOCTYPE doesn't match content
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
2 Warning: inserting missing 'title' element
<HTML>
4 Warning: <head> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<head>
5 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements; Warning: <link> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <link rel="StyleSheet" href="main.css" type="text/css">
6 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
7 Warning: <title> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<title>PriceBusterHotels -
9 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="keywords" content=
11 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="description" content=
13 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="Classification" content=
15 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="rating" content="general">
16 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
17 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
18 Warning: <meta> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<meta name="robots" content="all=INDEX,FOLLOW">
19 Warning: <link> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=
21 Warning: <bgsound> is not approved by W3C; Warning: <bgsound> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<bgsound src="Sinatra,Frank_NewYorkNewYork.mid" loop="1">
22 Warning: </head> isn't allowed in <body> elements
</head>
23 Warning: <body> isn't allowed in <body> elements
<body>
-----------------------------------------------------------
OK....here is what I have in my sourcecode, although I have eliminated the keywords, title, description for space here"
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <link rel="StyleSheet" href="main.css" type="text/css">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<title>
<meta name="keywords" content=" >
<meta description=" >
<meta name="Classification" content= >
<meta name="rating" content="general">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="robots" content="all=INDEX,FOLLOW">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=
"http:// ******/include/Chris/Hosted/templateimages/template/travelnowstyle2.html">
<bgsound src="Sinatra,Frank_NewYorkNewYork.mid" loop="1">
</head>
<body>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5">
<tr>
SO WHAT AM I DOING WRONG HERE! YIKES! ;0{
I put your lines of text into a file and tried to validate with tidy.
First off, you seem to have two <html> tags, one in upper case and one in lower.
Then the fragment has a <title> but no </title>, adding it gets us down to three error messages.
You have two link commands, your original one plus one copied from my suggestion, the latter has the "malformed URI". I removed it.
Some of your meta tags are malformed, I have corrected them.
With all that the only problem is the bgsound, a tag that I know nothing about. I removed it.
The following code validates:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html lang="en">
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"><link rel="StyleSheet" href="main.css" type="text/css">
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">
<title>Some Title</title><meta name="keywords" content="junk" >
<meta name="description" content="junk">
<meta name="Classification" content="junk" >
<meta name="rating" content="general">
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">
<meta name="robots" content="all=INDEX,FOLLOW">
</head>
<body>
<p> some stuff.
</body>
</html>
This lives in a file called (my apologies ;) ) junk.html. Running tidy on it gives:
% tidy -e junk.html
Info: Doctype given is "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
Info: Document content looks like HTML 4.01 Transitional
No warnings or errors were found.
I am a little dubious about the syntax of the robots meta with its two '=' signs, but the validator is not complaining. I suggest that you check the syntax.
This should allow you to get a good start on fixing the bugs.
Document Access: HTTP
Link Status: Real Time
Elapsed Time: 20
CPU Time: 3.98
Seems there are alot of variable results between the different validators out there, so who do you trust?
Trust the source of the html standards, the W3C (world wide web consortium). The W3C is the first and last word on html standards.
Forget that other site and go straight to the source where you can either upload a file or point to a url:
the main point it made in CAPS and in bold was-
"This page is NOT a Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!"
Don't sweat the error message. It is as glaring if you forget an alt tag as it is if you run the phone book through it. Mohamed_E has got you really close, just have a beer, take a deep breath and look for a few unclosed tags and extra punctionation and you'll have it licked!
W3C should tell you what is wrong so it will be fairly simple to clean up.
In addition to the W3C validator I use three others:
Dave works on assignment to the World Wide Web Consortium, where he is the W3C lead for Voice and Multimodal.
It is my main validator, since it can be used from the command line and hence incorporated in scripts.
There is a brief but very informative note on the WGD site on the difference between real validators and linters [htmlhelp.com], with emphasis on the use of a formal SGML parser for the former.
The output
00005 <link rel="StyleSheet" href="main.css" type="text/css">
00005 illegal value for TYPE attribute of link (text/css)
00005 Error: 404 Not Found main.css <Link>
shows confusion over the role of a validator. The statement
href="main.css"
My personal rule of thumb is that if the code is good enough for the common browsers to display it is good enough for the search engines to index.
Why, then, do I validate my HTML? I am not really sure, but it has a lot to with my pride as a craftsman. I understand HTML, I know how to write valid HTML, so why should I produce sloppy stuff?
I never suggested that you should validate your code, but since you seemed to want to do so I tried to give you some pointers.
There is a thread on the HTML forum where theer is a suggestion that 99% of the stuff on the web fails to validate. So you are obviously in "good" company (or at least have many companions :) ).
