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Valid xHTML Code And Your Website

Posted by Paul B | January 21, 2008 .

Isn’t it funny but with the age of blogging so many of the skills that actually went into building the World Wide Web are being left behind and forgotten about. It wasn’t all that long ago that in order to have a website you had to learn at the very least HTML and what DNS meant. Nowadays with hosted blogging accounts on Blogger and Word Press it is entirely possible to forget all about that, to many publishing content on the web has become nothing more than word processing. Whilst all this is great for those that want nothing more than a place to write, for those of us interested in creating popular websites that attract search traffic then there is still the need for coding the correct way. To give yourself the best possible chance that means valid xHTML and CSS coding.

Website layout used to be all about tables, horrible nasty things that bloated your source with far more tags than could possibly be good. It was a horrible mix of content and layout. This wasn’t in fact what tables were originally for but because they could be used to provide some sort of rigid structure to your design they were hijacked and used. One major down side of using these tables was that they tending to push the content that the search engines were interested in (i.e. your text) to the bottom of your source. Whilst even today the search engines aren’t all that bothered about valid code (there are many experts who predict that at some point it will matter though), they do take into account where your text appears relative to other text in the source. Taking advantage of the many positioning attributes built into CSS it’s possible to create source that gets your text content where it should be, right at the top. Taking it to the next level and using xHTML instead of HTML offers even more benefits.

The Advantages Of xHTML Over HTML
If you can write nice clean, valid HTML source then you are on your way to getting your webiste viewed by more people.

Cross-Browser Compatibility - By using valid xHTML you have a much better chance of a browser rendering your page the way you originally intended. The days of writing differnent source for Internet Explorer and Netscape are days many of us would prefer to forget.

Portability - By using valid xHTML your web page can be reformatted to be viewed on PDA’s, mobile phones and many other portable devices that have browsing capabilities.

Cleaner Coding - xHTML is a strict language, where as HTML has recommendations, xHTML has requirements. Although this might seem like a pain what it actually means is that you have much easier to maintain source. The easier something is to change the more likely we are to keep it up to date.

It All Sounds A Bit Complicated?
With the new generation of hosted or “I’ll just download a template” (I’m certainly guilty of that one) website owners then these are skills that many people just don’t have. Either get ready for a lot of reading or hire somebody to do it for you! For example one of my regular readers (SEO Optimization) runs a webiste called xHTML Coding where they will create valid xHTML static code from any design you can supply from only $60. Alternatively if you prefer to use Word Press then for only $110 you can get a valid xHTML template. Relatively speaking then that’s pennies for something that will have a long term affect on your websites performance. If it’s a choice between a week/months advert or something that has long term benefits I know what I’d choose!

Update: I’ve just found out that xHTML Coding will also create original designs, just contact them to get a quote.

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1 Comment so far
  1. Jackbravo UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.11  January 22, 2008 5:45 am

    hey Paul,
    Quick question for you, as an aside.

    You seem to have a lot of experience with building and making money from sites. I’ve been offered $1000 for my site. Any suggestions?

    It’s pr3, will make 55$ this month, and is on page 1 of google for a bunch of push up keywords.