The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web and is led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the man credited with “inventing” the Internet).

The W3C’s sole purpose is to ensure that the World Wide Web and websites work as well as possible. Its guidelines are extremely strict and are based solely on the concept of “accessibility for all”. While it’s unofficial (Google keeps the criteria it uses to rank websites a closely guarded secret), website developers widely agree that following these guidelines will help your website appear higher in the rankings. search engines. The W3C itself states “Following these guidelines will also help people find information on the Web more quickly.”

So if you want to compete effectively on the Internet, your business needs a W3C-approved website—one that’s web-friendly.

You must test websites against these guidelines using W3C’s free online validation service. To do this, simply enter the web address of the website you want to check.

If a website “validates”, then the website complies with the W3C guidelines. If it doesn’t “pass”, the validator will declare the errors and also any warnings. These errors and warnings can be used to identify problems in the website’s coding so that a web developer can fix them. Often these are highly technical detailed descriptions that are unintelligible to a layman.

From a developer’s point of view, a W3C bug report is very useful because it also includes a description of how to fix the problem so that the website passes validation.

mistakes

The most common error reported by W3C Validator is known as a “Syntax Error”. HTML and XHTML are languages ​​used within the website’s coding and W3C produces an approved list of commands (words used in the language). If a website developer has used an unapproved command (word), a syntax error occurs. The website may still appear to function and display correctly, but it does not meet the accessibility levels required by the W3C.

Warnings

Unlike errors, warnings occur when the W3C validator cannot understand the coding that the developer has used on the website. Sometimes it happens that the commands used are so different from the list of approved HTML and XHTML commands that the W3C cannot advise the developer on how to correct the problem. Even more serious, this could mean that the website has the potential to crash or not function properly.

This guide is a relatively simple overview of an extremely complex and highly technical area, usually reserved for well-skilled website developers. Therefore, it is important that we bring to your attention some additional details about the W3C guidelines that may also be relevant from time to time.

Validation Levels

In reality, there are different levels of validation and all of our websites conform to at least level 1 of the Guidelines. You can also work at higher levels if you wish, which may include giving visitors the ability to increase the font size on the website to make it more readable. You can also make sure that your website is compatible with “screen readers” (screen readers give the website a “voice” and read the content of the site to the visitor).

Content Management and Validation Systems

Many websites now support the use of a content editor (also known as a content management system) that allows people with little or no web development skills to quickly and easily create and manage content on their website.

This means that what was once the preserve of those with considerable technical expertise is now open to anyone with basic computer skills.

However, content editors have a very tough job on their hands as they have to grab all the plain text, images, links, tables, bulleted lists, etc. you throw at them and by using many formulas and processes, convert this raw data into W3C approved HTML and/or XHTML code.

While this is easy for a web developer to do, because they have prior knowledge of what is and is not “valid” code, it is very difficult for an automated system to do and often leads to deficiencies. For example, about 95% of validation errors on our websites originate from a content publisher. Much of this can be avoided by not cutting and pasting copies directly from Word for Windows into the Content Editor.

This is because Word for Windows contains a lot of hidden information that can interfere with the HTML and/or XHTML code of the website.

We always recommend that you first cut and paste from Word into a simpler word processor like Notepad. You can then cut and paste from Notepad back to the Content Editor and avoid a lot of validation errors. This is perfectly normal and is a problem often experienced by many website designers around the world.

Therefore, it is important that whenever you or your client add or change content on a website, you also check that it is still valid. If not, then your website designer should be able to fix it for you.