A few weeks ago I lost a contract for a WordPress developer because one of my sample sites didn’t validate. I tried to explain that in some circumstances as long as the page worked for the users, performance could be more important than standards.
To prove my point the Google home page failing validation was quoted. However the guy in question had been miss-sold by a SEO consultant the concept that validation was sacrosanct and the holy grail to SEO success.
The Installation
Was being used as a CMS (content managed by his staff) had approx 40 plug-ins, didn’t validate and didn’t pass cross browser compatibility .
After inspecting his system the basic design passed validation and could be re engineered with a few CSS alterations to render fine in the main browsers.
However the many plug-ins that were deployed were throwing the validation errors. Also the content provided by their staff was basically cut from word and pasted without any HTML tidying.
My Findings
The majority of his plug-ins were admin based so whilst they were throwing errors they wouldn’t have affected the robots (they would have been simply ignored when encountered).
His keyword and analytics were working fine the upshot was that the content inserted by their staff was the biggest problem. So in my view some simple CMS alterations tidying up his existing content and a mornings training for the staff would basically give them what they wanted.
Unfortunately he didn’t agree and went on his way. So I thought I would pen a little info here about validation and its pros and cons and the misconceptions of its use.
Read On >>
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