I knew pretty much nothing about CSS and XHTML Strict when I started this redesign.  I was just building on a generic template.

Lo, the ugliness when I started checking with the validator.  Ugh…

Anyway, I’m coding all future pages so they’ll be fully validated before going live.  I’ve also fixed several universal blocks and some one-page-only blocks to fix numerous errors.  I’ll steadily fix the other blocks and pages so that they all validate properly.

In some cases ( such as the Latest Releases page ) this will mean losing something, although I doubt many will care.  On that page, I had to get rid of the “opens in a new window” functionality.  Actually, I could have kept it, but it would have required huge amounts of recoding, and when I balanced it out, I decided the functionality wasn’t worth the effort involved.  A quick backspace of a few characters, and the page validates completely.

Most of my errors are from using tags such as img and br in the old format, and the new strict format requires these tags to “self close” with an ending slash.  Fortunately, a lot of these are in blocks, and I was able to nuke all the problems with a few keystrokes.

Unfortunately, there are a lot on individual pages that I’ll have to fix one at a time *laugh*

Ditto for image tags, which require the alt attribute in all lower-case now.  Pain in the ass…

I’ve also figured out another big problem, which involved me not understanding classes and id.  While the pages display fine, they won’t validate.  All it really requires is changing a couple of IDs to Classes in both the css and the page, but that’s something I’ll want to do very late at night, to minimize the possibility of people seeing broken pages in the meantime.

I have corrected this on the Latest Releases page, which should look no different than it ever has.  The same will be true of the rest of the pages where these fixes will go in.

Getting everything into compliance should help my search engine ranking, which might draw more eyes to my stories, which is part of the goal of the website.  I also need to go through and add descriptions + keywords to every page.  Even though the first is low priority and the second almost no priority in searches, they should really still be there.

Getting everything fixed will also get me in the habit, making coding everything correctly the first time more likely.

Added one more thing to the forum as well.  The current version of the software removed the little online indicator when viewing threads, and I installed a hook to restore this functionality.  I’ve always liked it, and there are a lot of people who do as well, so it’s back on my board, dagnabbit!  Coming from one of the best invision coders as well, and fully supported.

There’s another hook by this coder I might take advantage of in the future as well.  It allows me to use blocks within the suite that I build my webpages in on the sidebar of my forum.  I’ll probably add a “Latest Release” block to the sidebar there.  If the forum ever takes off, a lot of people are likely to bookmark the forum rather than the main site ( I know I often do this ) and that will provide a new story alert to anyone who does this.

The young one is just not cooperating with writing today.  He’s been upset all day, and I’ve been alternately trying to figure out what his problem is and engaging in his favorite play to cheer him up.  The latter tells me that it’s probably just a mood, because if he was sick or something, playing might make him smile while we were at it, but he’d immediately go back to whining.  It’s tough when he can’t tell me what hurts or anything of that nature. 🙁

Maybe once he winds down for the night, or before he gets up in the morning.

EDIT: Down to 10 pages ( visible to anyone but me ) left to fix for full validation.  Two of them won’t take long, and may get done while the young one is falling asleep ( winding down now )  One is the main page, and I’m going to wait until the lowest traffic time possible to fix that one.  Ditto for four more.  Three I may cheat and change to a new style sheet on, as they’re connected to the group of four.  If I don’t switch it up ( probably should be done anyway ) then that will be seven pages I’ll have to edit fast to keep them from showing up screwy to any visitors who stumble across them while I’m working.