I thought you were a guru? Some guru! You can’t even get your pages to validate at the Markup Validation Service. You should be ashamed. Very ashamed, calling yourself a guru. Ha!
Ouch! You busted me. I’m an idiot. No, on second thought there are reasons why my site doesn’t validate. I wish it did and I wish I could make it validate.
Here are the reasons why it doesn’t validate as compliant XHTML:
- Paypal buttons & graphics
- Video plugin
- WordPress WYSIWYG editor tag stripping!
I have a PayPal graphic in my sidebar that of course appears on every page. There are also some PayPal buttons on certain pages. These graphics and buttons are created by PayPal. PayPal creates them so they’ll work with any browser. In order to do that, they use older coding techniques. I could write CSS and modify the HTML so that it complies, but I don’t see the point. Besides, I don’t want to mess up the PayPal connection. I want the PayPal buttons to work.
I also have a video in my sidebar. There are videos on some of my blog pages also. The plugin I use for the videos generates the code for the videos. The author of the plugin uses the <embed> tag to define videos. This tag is not part of the XHTML specification. There’s a new one called <object> which would be compliant. Unfortunately, there isn’t good support in all browsers for the new tag. So the plugin author sticks with what works not what’s compliant. I don’t really want to hack the plugin just for compliance.
Last but not least, some genius over at WordPress.org decided to strip <p> tags out of the HTML editor. Really, you thought it would be a good idea to strip HTML tags out of an HTML editor? Man you guys are really smarter than the rest of us. I get really frustrated now when I switch between the WYSIWYG and the HTML editor. The <p> tags disappear and now my page is screwed up! Why? Why are you stripping tags out of the HTML editor? You’re wasting my time and messing with my pages! I feel better now, but sometimes there are missing <p> tags.
Some people place a high emphasis on compliance. I too would like to have my site comply but it would take a lot more effort than it’s worth. Compliance simply means that your code complies with a strict set of rules. If your pages aren’t compliant, they will still work and nobody will notice. It’s really not that big of a deal. Unless you’re one of those snob coders.
WordPress is great. I love it. But if you want to work with open source software, themes and plugins, it will be difficult to achieve compliance. Open source means most of the people who create WordPress, themes and plugins don’t make money. They create their products with what works, not what is strictly compliant. Deal with it. Or have your site hand coded at great expense.
July 2010 Update
I recently changed my video plugin to Viper’s Video Quicktags. Viper uses the XHTML compliant object tag correctly. Video elements on this site now validate correctly. Hmmm… how can I get PayPal buttons to validate correctly. Well, that’s just another task to add to my list!
Tags: valid XHTML, web site help, WordPress help
