I’ve got a new layout! It’s slightly similar to one I had a while ago… But I much prefer this one.

I’ve spent a few days converting my site to WordPress and updating all my pages and stuff. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while; Cutenews is okay, but I wanted something a bit more stable. I was surprised at how easy it was to convert my layout into a WordPress theme!

I also spent quite a bit of time making sure my site was XHTML and CSS valid. I’ve never made my site valid before… I figured I would this time, though. I put quite a few sites through the validator and was surprised at how many sites don’t actually have valid coding! So I decided to write a little about that.

It’d be great to see more blogging sites making their sites valid. Why is it a benefit and why should you take the time to do so? There’s are two good articles on it here and here, and to sum it up simply: having valid (X)HTML and CSS means your site should render properly in all web browsers (there are sometimes a few little things that cause it to show differently unfortunately), it decreases the time your site takes to load, it shows professionalism (I know a lot of bloggers want to be web designers – it’ll look great if you can code to the web standards set by the W3C), it makes your site more accessable and Google prefers valid code. Besides all that, it feels really good when you look and you see that little green bar saying you’ve passed validation!

So, if you have a bit of time, why not check out your website in the HTML and CSS validators, and see if you can fix your errors? It’s definitely worth it! And it’s pretty easy to fix most errors. The validator explains them, and you can always Google them to get further help. And no, it doesn’t make you king or queen of the internet if you have valid HTML and CSS, but it’s always a good thing to do and something to be proud of.

Well, this is probably getting pretty long and I want to go comment some people, so I’m going to leave you guys with a few questions!

1. Twitter – do you have one? Why/why not?
2. What’s your favourite social networking site (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and why?

My answers:
1. I don’t have one because I don’t understand what all the fuss is about! :laugh: I might get one so I can follow some famous people, though.
2. Facebook! It’s just simple and professional, and I like that.

:heart: