Markup validation app -- please review

[W3CLove]

I've released an online app for site-wide markup validation and I would like to hear your feedback.

It's called W3CLove and can be found at https://www.w3clove.com

You just need to enter the main URL of your site (or the URL of an XML sitemap if you prefer), and it will validate all the pages found there, and generate a simplified report with all the errors and warnings found.

This is a paid service but you can try it for free, I think it's worth it as it saves you a lot of time and helps find undiscovered errors on your "deep" pages.

I'd love to hear your feedback, I want to make it a great tool for web designers.

Thanks!

[ralph.m]

Looks like a great service. I love the idea behind it. The design is nice, and wow, a site I can understand from the first view. Well done.

A few things I note:

- the home page presents the option to enter a URL for validating a site. That's a bit confusing when it'c clear this is a paid service. It would be good to make it clearer up front how this all works. I tried validating a site, and it worked, although the results were pretty thin on the ground. The few errors had no real explanation. Perhaps that's because this is a free check, but it's a good idea to make that clear, as otherwise people might not think it's worth paying for this service.

Edit:

Ah, I see that if you click on the URL under the error, it goes to the W3C validation page. That's clever, but it's not obvious that this is what will happen. Rather than show the URL, it might be better to have text saying: "Click here to view detailed validation information for mysite.com/folder/page.html" or something like that.

- the other thing was that, while the validation was happening, it's not really all that clear if anything is happening. It might be good to give an explicit acknowledgement that the process is under way and that results will appear shortly, or something like that.

Good luck with this. It's a great idea.

[Mittineague]

A good idea, but fixing your own validation errors might help. eg.

www.w3clove.com Error

[ralph.m]

Off Topic:

A good idea, but fixing your own validation errors might help.

Heh heh, "nobody eats fish in the fisherman's house".

[W3CLove]

Thanks a lot ralph.m, I'll take your tips into account, those are things that could be improved.

[W3CLove]

Ha ha, touché!

Who said my own site had to be error free? I try it to be but sometimes I forget, must admit. You'd be surprised to see how many errors the Web gurus out there have on their sites.

A good idea, but fixing your own validation errors might help. eg.

www.w3clove.com Error

[Mittineague]

Off Topic:

Isn't that the truth. But I can't cast any stones. I just wrote a fairly hefty app and decided to try "use strict" just to see. I had a half dozen "undeclareds" when I would have bet there wouldn't have been any.

To be fair, I should give a review!

The site took a while to load in, but that might have more to do with my dial-up cnx than the page.

I'm usualy not fond of dark backgrounds, but I like your layout despite my bias.

I can't help but wonder if your site will end up being blocked though.

http://validator.w3.org/docs/api.html

.....
Note: Please be considerate in using this shared, free resource. Consider Installing your own instance of the validator for smooth and fast operation. Excessive use of the W3C Validation Service will be blocked.
.....
Note: If you wish to call the validator programmatically for a batch of documents, please make sure that your script will sleep for at least 1 second between requests. The Markup Validation service is a free, public service for all, your respect is appreciated. thanks.
.....

I didn't see anything about not being allowed to make money by using their free service, but maybe you should sell the app for individual use rather than have it run from your server? That is, market the free open-source version instead?

Seems the sitemap vs. crawl would resolve dynamic page canonical issues, but that should be made more obvious IMHO.

I'm a bit confused about "pricing" i.e.
Hobbyist $3/month 1,000 validations
"pay as you go" 1,000 page validations for just $5.00

If there's a difference, what is it?

[W3CLove]

Thanks for your comments Mittineague!

I can't help but wonder if your site will end up being blocked though.
http://validator.w3.org/docs/api.html

I'm running my own validation server just as they ask on "run your own instance". That is, I'm not making requests to them.

Seems the sitemap vs. crawl would resolve dynamic page canonical issues, but that should be made more obvious IMHO.

I don't understand this about dynamic page canonical issues, can you explain?

I'm a bit confused about "pricing" i.e.
Hobbyist $3/month 1,000 validations
"pay as you go" 1,000 page validations for just $5.00

If there's a difference, what is it?

I'm favoring subscriptions over packs. If you subscribe, it's cheaper.

[Mittineague]

Sorry for using my short-cut lingo. I should know better as it always takes more typing to explain than it would have to have been clear straight away.

What I mean is that a lot of sites have the same content but accessed from different URLs. eg. a WordPress blog could have
... archive/validation
... recent_posts/validation
... most_visited/validation
etc.

Google has introduced "canonical" to allow sites to indicate the "preferred" URL so it won't be seen as duplicate content.

How this would apply to you and users is that by not crawling the same page it would save the number of crawls.

BTW, it's fine explaining the price difference here to me, but maybe you want to make this clear to site visitors?