What is the point of saying "I am validated"?

[vgarcia]

On Vgarcia's comment

You said NO, and I understand your POV and respect it whole heartedly. Thing is, I feel more obligated to follow your believe because you possess much more knowledge in this field then I do.

BUT...

what is the point for sites like Alistapart or HappyCog putting out articles discussing the benefits of using Valid Code and SEO. Are they just
"blowing smoke up our behinds"

They're not blowing any smoke. Nobody has said that standards will lead to better SEO automatically just because your site validates. There are still a lot of other things you have to do with your content to really optimize your site for search engines. Same goes for accessibility really. No HTML, XML, or CSS standard requires you to have title attributes for your elements, but if you're conscious of accessibility you do it anyway in order to make your visitors' time on your site easier. People misconstrue these things because they are loosely related to writing solid, good code. However, they don't come automatically with XHTML/CSS validation, which is what I meant.

Maybe I read a little too much into your statement, I don't know. Please clarifiy if I did.

Maybe a little, but I do it too from time to time .

[ChaCha]

W. Luke,

Sorry for the hostility - I had a deadline at 8:30 this morning and was up for 48 hours preparing. Indeed the thread is about posting those w3c buttons on one's site. I could have sworn that you were going a little farther and denouncing standards because they aren't appreciated by the average web consumer. Of course, without web-standards b2b, b2g, b2c and all the other b2's would be difficult if not impossible and the consumer surely appreciates the efficiencies gained there.

[jag5311]

Thank vgarcia, I appreciate the clarity

I may have mistated some stuff myself, the message I was trying to come across was that by having cleaner code, and using appropriate tags ALONG with proper writing, it will benefit you more for SEO then if you were to do a complete site in Dreamweaver with all the crappy code attached and attempt to do the same thing in terms of SEO. There are no guarantee's in life, but you sure can make you life easier by doing it the proper way in terms of coding.

I completely redid my somethingspecialgiftbaskets.com website to conform to standards and used appropriate keywords in the appropriate attributes. Will it make me #1 on google. I doubt it, but will it improve my rankings, I hope so

[RockyShark]

I don't use them 99% of the time, but I wouldn't question anyone who did - it's all about education. True, most users wouldn't have a clue what standards are about, but knowledge is power. If more use them, over time they will become recognised.

The point is they don't need to be recognized by anyone other than web developers.

I don't agree with you there. I think if clients/website owners understood their importance that might help speed up the move to compliance generally.

Do you honestly think someone is going to stop visiting a site that doesn't validate if the content is good?

No - who is suggesting that? Who ever said their purpose was to increase traffic to your site???

Do you honestly think that web development standards should effect a consumer's daily life?

No - who ever said that? Who ever said their purpose was to improve the consumers' quality of life?

Do following them even offer a consumer any benefit whatsoever?

Following standards, you mean???

I notice you've also posted that you don't have a problem with them being displayed on a single page of the site, but are objecting to them being displayed on every page. At the end of the day: Does it really matter?

Such a controvesial topic!!!

[tapdig]

If validator bumper stickers bother me so much, why don't I mind the "Powered by..." adverts? There are a lot of them out there: blogger, mt, blosxom, Greymatter, PHPnuke, Gallery, Drupal, and so on. I use several free open source CMS myself. I think it's worth the cost of free to say, "Hey, these guys behind this link made my super site work with such ease, and I sure appreciate the support they give or how little cost there was to me, and the installation and operation is so easy... Why don't you click here and see what they've done for the good of mankind."

The fact that someone took the time to craft a website** correctly, with some uniform order (W3C standards), that all of mankind gets to enjoy... on whatever tehcnological rendering device... Why not allow the author to say, "Hey I spent a little extra time on this puppy, and I hope you enjoy your stay. This site is created to strict guidelines to ensure your enjoyment."

It's the author's site anyway... go ahead and show me what you've done to the place. If Mozilla, Apple, M$, A0L, AT&T, Adobe, Macromedia and McDonald's can't standardize the www, it must be up to the rest of us to do it. If the web can be standardized, then I'm sure M$ can make secure products.

**Unless it's a corporate site like this thread has mentioned before this post. There's no place for webmaster gloats, unless of course you're selling web services utilizing said standards.

[vgarcia]

If validator bumper stickers bother me so much, why don't I mind the "Powered by..." adverts? There are a lot of them out there: blogger, mt, blosxom, Greymatter, PHPnuke, Gallery, Drupal, and so on. I use several free open source CMS myself. I think it's worth the cost of free to say, "Hey, these guys behind this link made my super site work with such ease, and I sure appreciate the support they give or how little cost there was to me, and the installation and operation is so easy... Why don't you click here and see what they've done for the good of mankind."

See, I think of those as a possible security risk, especially given the holes found in PHPNuke in the past. The W3C buttons are a different story compared to the "Powered By" buttons. You're really not going to find a security hole in somebody's stylesheet.

It's the author's site anyway... go ahead and show me what you've done to the place. If Mozilla, Apple, M$, A0L, AT&T, Adobe, Macromedia and McDonald's can't standardize the www, it must be up to the rest of us to do it. If the web can be standardized, then I'm sure M$ can make secure products.

AOL (Netscape), Microsoft, and I believe Apple are members of the W3C. They help write the standards, but some companies implement them faster than others.

**Unless it's a corporate site like this thread has mentioned before this post. There's no place for webmaster gloats, unless of course you're selling web services utilizing said standards.

[Hierophant]

If validator bumper stickers bother me so much, why don't I mind the "Powered by..." adverts? There are a lot of them out there: blogger, mt, blosxom, Greymatter, PHPnuke, Gallery, Drupal, and so on. I use several free open source CMS myself. I think it's worth the cost of free to say, "Hey, these guys behind this link made my super site work with such ease, and I sure appreciate the support they give or how little cost there was to me, and the installation and operation is so easy... Why don't you click here and see what they've done for the good of mankind."

I won't use software that requires "Powered By" anywhere on it. Heck vBulletin doesn't even require those words. It does require a copyright though that can be removed if you pay for that option, which I will take in the future. It is all the same pagerank draining navigation that isn't needed and doesn't help the site any.

[jag5311]

I think we are at a NULL issue. Very good points have been provided, but it sounds like both sides are strong on their views and will not sway.

my 2 cents