Checking for html errors in your website or blog

So in doing a new web site or blog site, an error can be problematic.  One browser might ignore it, but another can completely be messed up.

You may open your website in Firefox and everything looks fine.  But then you check Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari, and in one or more of them your website looks completed messed up.

How to find html errors in your site

Well, this is where http://validator.w3.org comes in.  This web site will “browse” your website for you and parse the html in your website and report back errors.

  1. Go to http://validator.w3.org.
  2. Enter your URL in the Address text field.
  3. Click Check.

If you have errors they will be displayed, as well as the line number in your html source where the error occurs.

If you don’t have errors you will get a “Congratulations” and also be provided with some code to put on your site to say that your site is checked and “valid”.

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional

Being Thorough

For a static website, this is easy.  Check your pages once and since they rarely change, you are good for a long time.

For a blog, this is more complex. To be thorough you would have to check every post. Or only check a post if it is a problem.

3 Comments

  1. Brad Fallon says:

    I cannot view some things on web pages, most I can though. Have all current upgrades and flash player, java, shockwave players all working fine. Seems to be HTML error and have tried to change the editor, but didn't help. Happens with IE and Mozilla Foxfire.

  2. Hi,
    I am creating a website.
    But when I am checking validation my website through this site (http://validator.w3.org/), some error has occurred.
    How can I solve this problem?

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