Site Page Validation Project

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Sharkey
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Site Page Validation Project

Post by Sharkey »

Oh yeah, no end of projects, and now I've taken on another one. For the last few days I've been running the page code from the most popular pages on this site though the markup validator at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The point of this exercise is to detect and correct syntax and grammar errors in the HTML code from which the pages of this site are composed.

Many of the pages here go back to my original design of 1998, when the domain wasn't even purchased. The basic framework of the page design was composed in Netscape Navigator Composer. As new pages were added, I would open a page, edit its contents, and save it under a new file name. Errors in the code were carried forward in this manner, and editing the code introduced new errors. Netscape Composer was rather experimental, and the developers invented markup tags that were proprietary to Netscape browsers. This code remained in the pages long after Netscape ceased to be one of the leaders in browser software.

Once I got access to Microsoft Front Page (starting with FP 98, and working up through FP 2000 and then FP 2003), some, but not all of the Netscape errors got edited out of some of the pages, but not others. Fragments of orphan code floated around in the pages, sometimes ignored by browsers, sometimes not. Occasionally, the page code would produce such a whacked-out mess that I'd have to go in and hand edit raw code to get the look I wanted.

All of this has resulted in a real "dog's breakfast" (to quote our Aussie friends) of page code.

The World Wide Web Consortium validator service examines code and returns error messages, advising what parts of the pages are broken. So far, I've run a dozen or two pages though it, and results are anywhere from 2 to 150 errors per page. I then hand-edit the pages, testing the validation along the way, until the validator reports that there are no problems with the code on the page. I then save the file and run it through a browser to see if the layout has been affected, and perhaps edit the code further and re-validate if necessary.

Whew, what a job, but in the end, I'll end up with a better site, and pages that display properly in a larger variety of browsers.

Each page, once it's validated, gets a little icon at the bottom that can be clicked to re-validate the code by any viewer. It looks like this:

Image Image
(I choose the icon color depending on what I think looks best on each page)

As pages are finished, I'm placing a special icon on the sitemap to indicate that it's been validated. I don't have that version of the sitemap ready for public display yet, but that will be done in a while (of course, that requires creating new icons, editing the sitemap code to put them in, and editing the properties of other icons on the page to keep the alignment correct).

Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon and part of the evening writing a PHP script to revise the Site Statistics pages to be HTML 4.01 validated. Since they are created by the statistics program Analog, I can't control how they are written to the server, but I can take the file that they create and edit it automatically with a script every time a viewer requests it!

It will probably take a couple of months to validate every page on the site, there are literally hundreds (not even counting the forum), and I do a few each day.

Anyway, just a little insight into what a long-suffering webmaster has to do to keep on top of the Internet heap...
Sharkey
Original Founder
Posts: 1364
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 4:00 am
Contact:

Post by Sharkey »

Oh, uhg! That's done!!

Revisions to the site pages is mostly complete. In all, I edited the code in about 170 pages, wrote several new PHP scripts, created and edited about a dozen new graphics to display on the pages and Site Map, and learned more than I want to know about Markup Language.

After a time, I got to know where to look for code errors in most pages, particularly the ones that I wrote. Frequently, I could edit and proof the page in a few minutes or so, and other times, I'd struggle with multiple errors which cascade into a mountain of failures. Repairing one error would cause as many as a couple of dozen others. Particularly frustrating were pages that I copy/pasted code from other sources, such as news articles.

But now it's done, all of the HTML pages on the site are HTML 4.01 validated. The forum pages are validated to XHTML 1.0, a much higher standard, and I've begun going over several key pages outside the forum, like the main Home Page and Busbarn index page to upgrade them to XHTML validated as well.

Now I can get back to something that people actually care about. Any suggestions?
Griff
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Post by Griff »

Thanks for all your efforts in providing this excellent board, Sharkey! It's a part of my daily regimen.

What to do next? How about another installment on "Thirty Years In a House Truck"? (Can't wait to hear what happens next. *fidgets in anticipation*)
~(G)Q Arduously Avoiding Assimilation
Griff
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Joined: Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:25 pm
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Post by Griff »

Griff wrote:. . .What to do next? How about another installment on "Thirty Years In a House Truck"? (Can't wait to hear what happens next. *fidgets in anticipation*)
Thanks Sharkey! My jonesin' has been momentarily relieved! :)
~(G)Q Arduously Avoiding Assimilation
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