The Art Gallery Hub
{ Converting web visitors into seasoned collectors
Use the W3C validator as your programmer’s baseline standard
This article is primarily aimed at gallery owners already working on their website.
For a professional programmer to deliver pages that pass 'validation' by the Word Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is 'good practice', not 'exceptional service'.
Running this tool should be standard procedure before finishing each page.
It's a supplementary guarantee to all that an impartial institution validated his job.
You should expect no less
In reality a lot can (and does) go wrong. Sometimes even without your programmer realizing it.
Why? A lot of programmers rely on coding routines and forget all about the most simple things.
But the main reason why things go wrong is simple: time is money.
A lot of programmers don't pass their jobs through the W3C validator because some recommendations are rather cumbersome and thus time consuming to solve.
First things first
Unless the programmer certifies his work, you should run the check yourself before you accept his job and give your ok; you want everything perfect before releasing it to the world.
It's not about wanting to start a 'confrontation'; you are paying for a quality job, which entitles you to a site that stands validation.
No need to be web savvy
Looking up each page of your site in the W3C validator is an excellent way to check how properly your web designer or programmer has coded them.
That is exactly why the W3C has made its validator so accessible and user-friendly.
Take me there
- Go to "http://validator.w3.org"
- Copy/paste the URL of the page you want to control into the address field (for example: "http://www.mygallerysite.com/roster)"
- Click 'check'
There are two outcomes:
- 'Code green': you receive a confirmation that your page was successfully checked
- Code red': errors found while checking the page
Code red ? Don't panic
Nevertheless, when you get a 'code red' it's time to contact your programmer.
The validator presents as errors the entire cascade of elements following the erroneous programming statement. The list of errors and warnings is often impressive because the validator is so confused that it can't make sense of the rest of your page.
Don’t worry, as corrections are made, the list will reduce quickly.
What you should do next
Remind your programmer that your gallery's site must pass W3C validation.
Ask him to clean up and fix all errors before putting a page back online. Where possible, let him take care of the warnings too.
Going after every last error can cause some extra work or adjustments, but the benefits of a validated source code will largely pay for the efforts.
Perform a final validator check after your programmer has gone through the source code.
Can you run a validation yourself?
If you have access to your site's server and update your site yourself regularly, you certainly can. W3C even offers you a lot of extras to ease your task.
On the validation page you will find the 'More options' field. Check at least the following boxes as they provide useful additional help:
- Show Source: makes it easy to locate the exact spot of the glitches in your source code. The numbers mentioned in the list of errors and warnings correspond to the lines of code affected.
- Show outline: a handy tool to check if your headline tags are properly structured
- Clean up Markup with HTML-Tidy: you receive your page cleaned up !. All you need to do is copy/paste to replace your existing page and upload the cleaned code on your server. Although the corrections come without guarantee, risks are minimal.
Test the page first locally before uploading.
If you want to check additional elements, W3C offers you tools to find broken links, validate RSS feeds or check if your site complies with mobile content, etc.
Is there an extra reward?
Not really. W3C is well aware that a 'properly coded' web page isn't necessarily a 'good' or a 'quality' page.
W3C only suggests you insert a W3C logo as a confirmation the site is validated.
Some professionals consider it 'showing off'
If you're 100 percent sure all your pages are validated it's always a plus to announce it somewhere on your gallery's site, for example on your contact page.
It is a sure sign that you take care of the tool you're working with, that you are serious about your web presence and how your site performs.
Luuk Christiaens
P.S. If you are creating a new site, my best recommendation is that you should embed the use the W3C Validator as your programmer’s baseline standard in your Statement of Requirement.
Do you want to read one more article in the Back Room?