Validation
When creating the XHTML for each page's content, how do we know that the code is correct? Obviously it is a dreary and time-consuming task to check the code visually so we need an automatic method.
Depending on what tool is used to compose the code, it may have a validator built in. In which case, the software and page templates must be carefully configured to start with. This must take into account the entire page code, not only what is between the <body></body> tags.
Another method of validation is to use the free validator at W3C. Following the link Check validity of this XHTML will forward a copy of the current page to the W3C validator and provide a checklist of errors.
One important note, however, is that while validation will find errors in the code, some uses to which we might put our content may require certain rules which are not tested by the validators. For instance, we should not use plain quote marks in title fields if we wish to publish the item to an RSS feed. While plain quotes will will pass the XHTML test they are still not allowed in RSS 0.91.
