Blogger Templates Cannot Be Easily Validated, Using Public Diagnostic Tools

We see panic, exhibited by many blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

I used the W3 Template Validator, and got hundreds of errors! Is my blog broken?

This blog owner, like many others, does not understand the differences between W3 Standard HTML / XHTML, and Blogger HTML / XML.

The unpleasant truth is that, ever since Blogger released the Layout class templates, in 2007, Blogger has been providing templates that can't be successfully validated using HTML / XHTML standards. Blogger has a lot of features that don't validate, according to public standards.

That's not to say that the W3 Template Validator, and similar online analysis tools and code validators won't be useful, in helping you proactively check your blog for problems.

If you've tweaked your template, and / or added various HTML based accessories, you may find a few informative entries, in a typical validation report.

Upon examining the validation report for this blog, I can find more than a few references to various accessories and tweaks that I've made in the past, which I can identify. Some of the 498 errors (as of today) can maybe be fixed - but many can't.

If you want to look for problems with your blog, start by creating a test blog, using the same template that you have. Then, run the validation of your choice against your test blog. The report that comes from your test blog, you can use as a baseline.

Take your baseline report, and compare it with the report for your working blog. Unless you've done a lot of customisation to your blog, you'll find a lot more errors identified on both reports, than not. You can (maybe, should) fix the problems which are unique to your working blog - and you may have to walk away from the others.

Like the frustrations caused by referer spam, which you learn to live with, I may have to ignore some coding imperfections. Your blog may be the same.

>> Top

Research Custom Domain Problems From The Beginning Of The Purchase

Sometimes, researching a problem, with a custom domain published blog, involves a Who Is lookup, to determine key domain details - like DNS server namess, purchase date, registrar name, and others. Starting with the properly spelled domain name is essential, to getting a useful Who Is lookup. In cases where the blog / domain owner can't spell the domain name consistently, you can start even more basically.

To determine the details about a domain purchase, when you have any doubt, ask for a copy of the invoice or receipt. If the transaction was conducted electronically, copy and paste of the key information is most useful. If the transaction involved a paper trail, have the receipt scanned, and a picture posted somewhere that you can view.

The invoice or receipt, for any domain purchase, will help identify - and confirm or deny - key details.

• Correct domain name - spelling.
• Purchase date.
• Name of registrar.

All of these details are useful, in researching a problem with a custom domain published blog.

Starting with the domain name, verified from the invoice or receipt, you can use any of several similar Who Is lookup tools.

• DomainTools.
• MXToolbox.
• Name ("who.is").
• Network-Tools.

Having multiple complementary tools can be useful, many times - both as backup (in case one is offline, for some reason) - and to confirm or deny unexpected results.

>> Top

Identifying The Frog - And Other Image Oddities - On The Blog

An occasional sign of confusion, seen occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, starts with a simple statement.

There's a frog on my blog!

Those of us who know about third party templates know what's up, here. Given the right browser, you can find the problem, in a couple minutes.

Some third party template providers use separate, third party image hosting services, for serving the graphics used by their templates. Some of the image hosting services, unfortunately, limit their bandwidth. When a given image, that they are serving, exceeds a given amount of bandwidth in a day, or maybe a month, they stop serving the image - maybe the background or another decoration - and they replace it with their logo.

One of these "replacement" logos is the well known PhotoBucket Frog.

If your blog uses one of the more popular templates, provided by the third party service, your readers will find out about it - and you may find out from them.

Why is your blog so plain - and why are there frogs all over the face?

And there is your blog - with no background, and with the frog images.

If you have Firefox, you can use the Media tab in the Tools - "Page Info" wizard. The Media tab displays a quick inventory of all images used, in any web page. Each image is represented by a URL, and a thumbnail. Just open the Media tab, with your blog (and the frogs) displayed, and scan down the list. When you see the frog, look at the URL - and there's the source of your problem.

Then pick another template - maybe a standard Blogger template - and make your blog pretty, again.

>> Top