I tried validating my html and I keep getting 2 errors that I don’t know how to fix…
[I]Validation Output: 2 Errors
Line 67, Column 17: document type does not allow element “div” here; assuming missing “body” start-tag
<div id=“apDiv3”>[/I]
"this is my line 67: <div id=“apDiv3”>
Line 107, Column 7: XML Parsing Error: Opening and ending tag mismatch: html line 2 and body
</body>
“this is my line 107” </body>
Does anyone know how to fix this?
thank you
Welcome to Sitepoint. 
It might be a little difficult to try and guess what the problem would be with just those two lines…for me, anyway. Could you perhaps post the html in this thread within [ CODE ] [ /CODE ] tags…or a URL if possible?
Hi thisismonica, welcome to the forums,
The validation error messages can be perplexing enough even when you have all the code in front of you, as agarcia831 said, those 2 lines are not enough to see where the problem lies. The lines reported are not neccessarily the lines causing the problem. The reported lines are where the validator first realizes there’s an error. The cause could be that line or anywhere before it. And usually a single error creates multiple error messages. I’m guessing you have an extra or missing tag and it’s throwing the nesting off. But need to see more, at least the code before line 67.
I think there’s a strong clue to the cause in the error message itself:
Make sure you have a <body> start-tag in your document, just after the </head> end-tag.
This tag is optional in HTML (but it’s usually considered bad practice these days to omit it).
The error message mentions an XML parsing error, though, so it looks as if you’re using XHTML (which is very odd, if you’re a beginner like you say). XHTML is XML, not HTML, and XML doesn’t allow any tags to be omitted.
A lot of people learn from books/tuts that start them with (X)HTML. When they come here, or other places where standardistas tend to run free they learn, tardily, that almost every design would do better to be coded in strict HTML.
Do you have a working URI, or a completed code sample available?
A lot of people learn from books/tuts that start them with (X)HTML. When they come here, or other places where standardistas tend to run free they learn, tardily, that almost every design would do better to be coded in strict HTML.
Like… Ian Lloyd’s book.
Like pretty much every popular templating system, like Drupal and Wordpress (I’m going to be very interested to see how they are going to do RDFa in Drupal 7 with an XHTML-as-html templating system (not real XHTML).
this is my code
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=utf-8” />
<title>Joanna Goddard | Home</title>
<link href=“joannacss.css” rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css” />
<style type=“text/css”>
<!–
#apDiv1 {
position:absolute;
left:139px;
top:29px;
width:390px;
height:703px;
z-index:1;
}
#apDiv3 {
position:absolute;
left:41px;
top:189px;
width:197px;
height:420px;
z-index:1;
}
#apDiv2 {
position:absolute;
left:272px;
top:24px;
width:662px;
height:164px;
z-index:2;
}
#apDiv4 {
position:absolute;
left:273px;
top:187px;
width:663px;
height:323px;
z-index:3;
}
#apDiv5 {
position:absolute;
left:586px;
top:204px;
width:317px;
height:236px;
z-index:4;
border-left: 0px none;
border-top-width: 0px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-top-style: none;
border-right-style: none;
border-bottom: 0px none;
}
#apDiv6 {
position:absolute;
left:330px;
top:476px;
width:595px;
height:150px;
z-index:5;
text-align: right;
}
–>
</style>
</head>
<div id=“apDiv3”>
<p class=“socialnetworks”>Find me here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://twitter.com/joannagoddard”><img src=“images/twitter.png” alt=“Twitter” width=“100” height=“100” /></a><br />
<span class=“social”>Follow me on</span> <span class=“socialnetworks”><a href=“http://twitter.com/joannagoddard”>Twitter</a></span><a href=“http://www.facebook.com/people/Joanna-Goddard/507751142”><img src=“images/facebook.png” alt=“Facebook” width=“100” height=“100” /></a><br />
<span class=“social”>Let’s be friends on</span> <span class=“socialnetworks”><a href=“http://www.facebook.com/people/Joanna-Goddard/507751142”>Facebook</a></span><br />
<a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/7345817@N08/”><img src=“images/flickr.png” alt=“Flickr” width=“100” height=“100” /></a><br />
<span class=“social”>My pictures on</span> <span class=“socialnetworks”><a href=“http://www.flickr.com/photos/7345817@N08/”>Flickr</a></span></p>
</div>
<div id=“apDiv2”>
<div align=“left”><span class=“header”>The professional website of </span><br />
<span class=“maintitle”>Joanna Goddard</span>
</div>
<div align=“right”><br />
<span class=“socialnetworks”><a href=“index.html”>Home</a> \ <a href=“clips.html”>Clips</a> \ <a href=“bio.html”>Bio</a> \ <a href=“contact.html”>Contact</a> \ <a href=“blog.html”>Blog</a></span></div>
</div>
<div id=“apDiv4”><img src=“images/joannahome.jpg” alt=“Hello there. I’m Joanna Goddard” width=“280” height=“265” hspace=“2” vspace=“2” class=“images” /><br />
<span class=“caption”>Photo* by Alex Williams. </span>
<p align=“right”> </p>
</div>
<div id=“apDiv5”>
<h3 align=“left”><span class=“nicetomeetyou”>Hello there.</span></h3>
<h3 align=“left”>I’m a magazine writer and blogger, who covers design, culture, travel, relationships<br />
and lifestyle.</h3>
<h3 align=“left” class=“nicetomeetyou”>So nice to meet you.<br />
</h3>
</div>
<div id=“apDiv6”>
<p class=“title”>Contact Information</p>
<p><span class=“social”>Joanna Goddard<br />
646.281.3437<br />
hellojoannagoddard@gmail.com <br />
</span><br />
<span class=“socialnetworks”>Copyright 2009 Joanna Goddard. All rights reserved.<br />
</span><a target=“_top” href=“http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/”>Web Hosting by Yahoo!</a></p>
<p><br />
</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
oh…I’m missing my body tag…I fixed it already! thank you guys for your responses…xoxo
Monica, glad to help. Don’t hesitate to post further questions.
Also on line 68 you are missing a closing </p> for ( “… Find me here/p>”) but when you add the <body> too it will then work with no warning, etc.
She didn’t put the code inside bbtags or shut of smilies so the Find me here:</p> semi-colon left-angle bracket got changed to pacman :<
I know my damn GPRS connection for some reason didn’t load Pacman first of all; so I got as I posted above (minus Pacman). In fact it has been cutting out a lot today… Even so it has an interesting side-effect. 
I remember somewhere when I first signed up that I could say “always no smilies” somewhere, but that never worked. I wish it were selected by default, as I never, ever use smilies. In fact, I even add a space in my smilies to stop them from smilification : )
Smilies are evil and destroy code. Death to smilies!