Because I feel this is really crucial, I’m going to briefly cover Standards Compliant Coding. This might be boring to some, but it is vitally important! Try not to fall asleep, LOL.

Whether you are a seasoned veteran, or new to web design, using Standards Compliant X/HTML and CSS should be at the top of your list as the most important aspect of your website design. What exactly is “Standards Compliant”? Partial excerpt from Wikipedia:…”it is a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods” … set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C – w3.org). Sorry, this might seem redundant to newbies, but it is essential to “follow the rules” when it comes to web design! ...Click here to read the rest of this post from Business Darlings.

Business Darlings is authored by various VAF members.


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Good points Jules, and ultimately it does mean less work. It also means more scalable projects that you can easily update or add to later.

Speaking of which, I'd be really interested to find out what percentage of the 'freebie' website builders out there are compliant or result in compliant code once their text and HTML editors get done with whatever the user enters... my guess is not many.

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Thanks Tess! Good point about being able to easily update and add to later.

Most come "out of the box" not being compliant and then add into that what the user enters, and it can be an ugly mess. IMHO, it is best to do things right, right from the get go. Websites, after all, are where we [need to] put our best foot forward as a business. The coding behind the scenes might not seem important, but in order for your business to look its best in major browsers, it is vitally important.

Regarding the freebie website builders, I feel that 99% of them are not compliant. Even though I don't comment on every website review request here, I do run those that use freebie site builders through the validator, and my experience thus far is that almost all do not pass - some more so than others with numerous glaring errors in code.

If your bricks and mortar business needed priming [i.e. compliant coding] before a coat of paint, you're going to do it - so why not do so regarding our web presence and present ourselves in the best possible light?

As an aside: my own site doesn't validate because of amazon widgets. Makes me want to spit! So it's not just website builders, we also have to be aware of what we add to our sites. I'm working on a fix for my site issues; it's darn irritating!

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Jules, SunRise Virtual Solutions - WordPress Customization & XHTML/CSS Web Sites

I couldn't agree more! Just collecting more cannon fodder to share with the next person who comes asking me if XYZ free site is worth using.

While I think it's important to strive for compliance I don't know that 100% is attainable for sites that utilize third party plugins, etc. - and that can be OK too. It's a matter of balance I think. As long as the bones of the site are coded with standards in mind I wouldn't spend a lot of energy worrying about those widgets, unless they're causing problems with other aspects of your site. But I know that when you click that button to check the code it frustrates to no end to see flaws in the report due to someone else's poorly coded plugin.

After all, compliance isn't something your average client is necessarily going to be aware of - well, in most cases anyway

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