Help me understand Validation.

sachi · 02-10-2007, 01:00 PM

Validate, validate, validate. That is what they always say before asking for help with CSS. I understand that. But what happens if you don't know to how to make heads or tails of your validation errors?

To cut to the chase, this is site that I'm working on.

There are a couple of issues that I'm trying to understand when it comes to validation.

First, I get errors about me missing a head or start tag. Here is an example of my site;

Code:

document type does not allow element "meta" here; assuming missing "head" start-tag .

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

Or I seem to missing a ul, ol, or menu start tag such as this;

Code:

document type does not allow element "li" here; missing one of "ul", "ol", "menu", "dir" start-tag .

	 <li>	<li><a href='#

But when I check my html, I know that I don't have two li li tags like that, so I don't understand how the validator came to that conclusion?

I have 12 validating errors. 10 of them are because of improper nesting with my lists.

and then third error I get is ;

Code:

end tag for element "a" which is not open .

...rmation <a href="/sitemap/" />Sitemap</a></p>

I don't get it. Isn't the "/a" supposed to be there?

Help me make sense of validation so that I can please the validating gods and make this site xhtml 1.0 valid!

BTW- if there is online resource that helps give examples of how to validate xhtml elements in a non-techie way, then that would be appreciated.

nasty.web · 02-10-2007, 03:50 PM

1. you miss the <head> tag. I've found the closing tag </head>, but you've not opened it.
2. your haven't closed the first <li>
3. the a tag cannot be closed like that<a href="/sitemap/" />

The rules: all tags must be closed. Some are unpaired tags, that have no closing elements - they end with />. Other tags open and close in pairs : <li> ... </li>, etc

sachi · 02-10-2007, 06:29 PM

Thanks for helping. #1 and #3 makes more sense now. However, after messing around with #2, I am still lost. This is what my code looks like for the sidebar. Can you tell me where the li tag is missing here?

I am using dreamweaver and I assume it automatically closes any tags that I may have been missing.

Also, I got this list from what the Wordpress documentation said about how to style nested lists here. Apparently, I am still not making the connection with this.

Code:

<ul>
		
		<li><h2><a href="#">Back to Homepage</a></h2></li>
		 
		<li><h2>Last Five Entries</h2>
		<ul>
	 <li><?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=5'); ?></li>
		</ul></li>
  
	 	<li><h2>Categories</h2>
		<ul>
	    <li><?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=id&optioncount=0&children=0&exclude='); ?></li>
	    </ul></li>

		<li><h2>Archives</h2>
		<ul>
		<li><?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?></li>
		</ul></li>

		</ul>

Lorissa · 02-11-2007, 09:51 AM

It looks like you have an extra <li> encapsulating the nested list. Perhaps WP is inserting this? When I view source, I see this:

Code:

<li><h2><a href="#">Back to Homepage</a></h2></li>
  <li><h2>Last Five Entries</h2>
   <ul>
      <li>	
      <li><a href='http://sachitesting.com/2007/01/25/trackbacking-another-comment/' title='Trackbacking another comment'>Trackbacking another comment</a></li>
      <li><a href='http://sachitesting.com/2007/01/25/another-blog-entry-to-test/' title='Another blog entry to test'>Another blog entry to test</a></li>
      <li><a href='http://sachitesting.com/2006/11/07/just-testing-this-out/' title='just testing this out!'>just testing this out!</a></li>
      </li>
   </ul>
 </li>

It occurs on all 3 lists - Last Five Entries, Categories and Archives. Remove that extra encapsulating <li> and </li> and you should be set.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Lorissa

sachi · 02-11-2007, 02:32 PM

Thanks Lorissa. I've sinced removed the <li></li> tags in my sidebar.php file before uploading and the site validates fine.

So my question is was I wrong to put <li> tags there to begin with as it relates to CSS nested lists? Or was it a WP issue that I had to accommodate for?