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1. Oceanwatcher
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #

   I have just set up my first site with WordPress. I have used the Connections theme and modified as much as I could. And for a long time, everything seemed fine.

   But now when I wanted to check my page to see if it validates (XML and CSS) I get a lot of errors. I am not very good at this, so I hope someone will be kind enough to help me find out what is causing this.

   I suspect it can be the editor I am using, WYSI-Wordpress. Maybe it is because I have started to add content and it is not doing things right...

   I installed the last version of WordPress so that should be ok. Not sure about all the plug-ins.

   Is it possible to find out by looking at the source what is wrong?

   Thanks for reading this far. Hope someone can help.

2. Lorelle
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #

   Your problems are multi-fold.

   First, the WYSIWYG editor is probably giving you a few of the lost paragraph tags. Check the line numbers and track them down to fix them and determine what it is you are doing that make those happen. WYSIWYG editors are still not very perfect.

   Your template files has some problems in the sidebar.php template. The nested list is a common problem in the sidebar and with careful scrutiny, and the WordPress Codex article on Styling Lists with CSS, you can figure that out.

   The plugin you are using for Weather has more problems. Turn that off and your problems there will go away. I know a lot of people enjoy that, but honestly, how important is the weather where you are to people in Russia or England reading your site? Do they care? Is your site about the weather? Don't think so? Maybe you don't need to clutter and the time it will take to track down those errors.

   Errors in your web pages are kinda like dominos. One lost tag and the rest look borked because the browser is still hunting for that one closed tag. Find that missing part and the rest of the errors will go away.

   And avoid using inline styles like the text-align:center in the DIVs. Set that in your style.css style sheet in the appropriate DIV reference.

   You only have 19 errors. Be thrilled with that. I've seen pages with hundreds of errors - so many, the checker stopped checking. Many of these are caused by the little missing tag in your sidebar. Fix that and test again.

3. Oceanwatcher
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #

   Thank you very much for your insight.

   The weather is gone, and with that, 11 of the errors... Well spotted!

   I would not even know where to begin on the sidebar nested lists. I am not a programmer. My abilities so far has been quite streched by this...

   BUT - I am starting to think that the validator has a problem. When you look at the validation output, revalidate and check the "With source" option. Then use the link up to the right to have a look at the source with line numbers. Then take a look at line 134 (I have no idea where column 4 is...) and tell me if you see anything missing. From what I see, the tag is as complete as it can be! So what should I do? Can I trust this test?

   I took away the Technorati code, and some more things. I am now down to two errors. Would be cool to fix those as well...

4. Mark (podz)
   Support Maven
   Posted 6 years ago #

   Those two are caused by wp auto-formatting the entry.

   Edit the entry concerned and carefully examine what it looks like - somewhere there is a carriage return or similar that need not be there.

5. brittanie
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #

   One thing that helps me keep my site valid during a redesign is Firefox. If you install Firefox (free!) and use it as a browser, you can also install another free program called Tidy (also on the Mozilla web site). When you look at your site in FF, Tidy shows a little notation in the bottom right corner showing how many errors and warnings you have. If you then VIEW YOUR SOURCE, a window opens explaining IN DETAIL each of those errors. I find this very helpful, since sometimes the W3 Validator using techie mumbo jumbo that I don't understand. Tidy uses laymen's terms and even pinpoints the exact spot in your code where the error is occuring and explains how to fix it. I find using this in conjuntion with the Validator makes a big difference.

6. Oceanwatcher
   Member
   Posted 6 years ago #

   Thank you podz, I will try to find out more. I am having a little problems doing that since I do not know anything about programming this stuff. I am learning as I go :-)

   Brittanie - Very cool tip. I already use Firefox (of course :-) ), but did not know about that plug-in. Getting it now! Thank you very much.

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