Title: Validation (Amazon link)
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Validation (Amazon link)

 *  Resolved [altfg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/altfg/)
 * (@altfg)
 * [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/)
 * Hello,
 * My site used to be validated, but I’m now getting all those error messages stating
   that the following isn’t correct:
 * … ?s=dvd&v=glance&n=594 …
 * Every single character is getting an ERROR message. The “&” character seems to
   be the one that’s causing all the glitches. This “text” is part of a “Shop at
   Amazon” link.
 * I’d like to know how I can solve this problem.
 * While I’m at it…
 * When I type in my WordPress blog’s address at this specific validator page ([http://validator.w3.org/](http://validator.w3.org/)),
   the validator just says the blog has failed the validation, without telling me
   where exactly were the problems.
 * This is all the site tells me:
 * Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 15 it contained 
   one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes
   found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check
   both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.
 * It’s impossible (for me) to find the error on my page’s code when that’s all 
   the information I get. (Even after checking “Show source,” etc.) Why does that
   happen? And how can I fix it?
 * Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [Doodlebee](https://wordpress.org/support/users/doodlebee/)
 * (@doodlebee)
 * [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/#post-446433)
 * 1) Amazon code:
 * replace all instances of “&” with “`&`“. The script will still work, and 
   the code will validate.
 * 2) “I cannot interpret as utf-8 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid
   values in the specified Character Encoding).”
 * You probably used something other than a text editor to post. Perhaps you wrote
   your post in Wordpad (in RTF format) or in Microsoft Word or something like that,
   then you copied and pasted whatever it was you wrote into your template – be 
   it as code or an actual post. Bad thing to do, as anything aside from basic ASCII
   text will have it’s own character formatting which will screw things up.
 * You’d be able to see what characters are getting screwed up easily by viewing
   your site – things like apostrophes, commas and the like will appears as “?” (
   so words like “It’s” will look like “It?s”), and em dashes will also cause things
   to be screwed up (Those aren’t as visible, but they’ll do you in).
 * Hope that helps ya.
 *  Thread Starter [altfg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/altfg/)
 * (@altfg)
 * [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/#post-446440)
 * I’ll give it a try. Thanks very much for the tips.
 *  Thread Starter [altfg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/altfg/)
 * (@altfg)
 * [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/#post-446453)
 * For those who are interested…
 * The character that was causing the trouble was a copyright sign found in the 
   AdSense plug-in (in the header section of the blog). I had to go to the Adsense
   editor to replace the “©” with a “©”
 * Thanks again for the suggestions.
 *  Thread Starter [altfg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/altfg/)
 * (@altfg)
 * [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/#post-446454)
 * oops. I meant to say, I replaced the © with the appropriate html code.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘Validation (Amazon link)’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

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

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [altfg](https://wordpress.org/support/users/altfg/)
 * Last activity: [19 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/validation-amazon-link/#post-446454)
 * Status: resolved

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