Title: Conflicts in Testing WordPress Themes
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# Conflicts in Testing WordPress Themes

 *  [Clicknathan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clicknathan/)
 * (@clicknathan)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/)
 * According to the [Theme Review Guidelines](http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Review):
 * > Themes must not generate any WordPress deprecated-function notices, PHP errors,
   > warnings, or notices, HTML/CSS validation errors, or JavaScript errors.
 * That means any theme that uses `the_category()` won’t pass the guidelines. I 
   appreciate the strict requirements for themes posted here, but shouldn’t basic
   WordPress functions facilitate this? What do you guys think?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

 *  Thread Starter [Clicknathan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clicknathan/)
 * (@clicknathan)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495349)
 * To clarify, `the_category()` doesn’t pass HTML validation because it outputs 
   a `rel="category"` attribute which W3C tells me is a big no-no.
 *  Thread Starter [Clicknathan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clicknathan/)
 * (@clicknathan)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495362)
 * I’d still love to hear anyone’s thoughts / opinions on this but I’ve written 
   up some code to replace the_category() with a function that outputs valid code:
 * [The full rundown here.](http://clicknathan.com/web-design/html5-compliant-wordpress-category-link/)
 * But essentially, here’s the function:
 *     ```
       // Create a function to output valid category links
       function the_category_valid() {
        $categories = get_the_category();
       	  $separator = ', ';
       	  $output = '';
       	  if($categories){
       		  foreach($categories as $category) {
       			  $output .= '<a href="'.get_category_link($category->term_id ).'" title="' . esc_attr( sprintf( __( "View all posts in %s" ), $category->name ) ) . '">'.$category->cat_name.'</a>'.$separator;
       		  }
       		  echo trim($output, $separator);
       	  }
       }
       ```
   
 * I suppose it could be customized even further to allow for all of the various
   functionality of WordPress’ the_category() but that’s a good start. Feel free
   to improve!
 *  [Chip Bennett](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chipbennett/)
 * (@chipbennett)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495390)
 * HTML/CSS validation is not strictly enforced, and has not been for some time.
   HTML validation is too ethereal, and not nearly important enough, to warrant 
   strict enforcement.
 * HTML/CSS validation is only enforced so far as: _don’t break anything with your
   markup_, such as with improperly nested tags/unclosed containers/etc.
 *  Thread Starter [Clicknathan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/clicknathan/)
 * (@clicknathan)
 * [13 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495392)
 * Hey thanks for the reply, Chip, always very appreciated to hear back from someone
   other than myself. 🙂
 * I absolutely _love_ these resources by the way. Makes developing themes for my
   clients so much easier to test and ensure.
 *  [codefore](https://wordpress.org/support/users/codefore/)
 * (@codefore)
 * [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495600)
 * I updated to latest WP application. Lost my new post template. Then the site (
   Godaddy host)went down. Something in WP changed the Godaddy HT access file. We
   had to rename it to bring the site back up. Now I get a message from Google that
   they cannot access the robots.txt file.. I installed a WP site map plugin but
   cannot access the HTML to repair the errors. And of course, NO HELP FROM WP. 
   Im trying to get a management name from San Francisco WP to see why we get no
   help except from outdated and closed forums. [http://www.codeforeblog.com](http://www.codeforeblog.com)
 *  [Michael](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alchymyth/)
 * (@alchymyth)
 * [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495601)
 * [@codefore](https://wordpress.org/support/users/codefore/)
 * please [start a new topic](http://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting#postform);
 * your problem has nothing in common with the current topic.
 * [http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#Where_To_Post](http://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#Where_To_Post)

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

The topic ‘Conflicts in Testing WordPress Themes’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [theme development](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/theme-development/)

 * 6 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: [Michael](https://wordpress.org/support/users/alchymyth/)
 * Last activity: [13 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/conflicts-in-testing-wordpress-themes/#post-3495601)
 * Status: not a support question

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