Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

HTML has done a lot of growing up. So has a lot of other coding languages. However with some older tutorial sites and older manuals that people read online, there are still a lot of mistakes happening. In most content management systems, including WordPress, it is allowable to use HTML when creating posts or pages.

Here are 8 HTML mistakes you should avoid.

1. Image tags do not have a name (alt)

WRONG WAY:
<img src="YOURIMAGEFILEHERE" />

CORRECT WAY:
<img src="YOURIMAGEFILEHERE" alt="NAMEOFIMAGEHERE" />

2. Lists are not formatted correctly

WRONG WAY:
Peaches<br />
Milk<br />
Bread


OR


1. Peaches <br />
2. Milk</br >
3. Bread


CORRECT WAY:


<ul>
<li>Peaches</li>
<li>Milk</li>
<li>Bread</li>
</ul>


OR


<ol>
<li>Peaches</li>
<li>Milk</li>
<li>Bread</li>
</ol>


3. Italics and Bold tags are wrong

Bold is <strong>, and not <b>

Italics is <em>, and not <i>

4. Using the line break tag instead of the paragraph tag

If you are putting a space between two paragraphs, use the


<p>

tag and not the <br />. Just make sure the style the paragraph tag in your CSS.

Example:

<p>I need to go shopping soon, but I forgot to make a list.</p>
<p>I am busy now, but I might be able to make that list later.</p>


5. Using outdated code or elements that have deprecated

Here is a short list of some that should not be used:

• <applet>
• <basefont>
• <center>
• <dir>
• <embed>
• <font>
• <isindex>
• <menu>
• <noembed>
• <s>
• <strike>
• <u>

6. Not specifying a DOCTYPE

This is the first thing that should go on any website. This tells the browser what kind of markup language you are using for your website. W3C has a great list of recommended DOCTYPE declarations.

7. Using Tables for design

Tables can be nice to work with, but can be very limiting. They are intended for hard core data. So if you have a post that for example compares WordPress to Blogger, you are going to want to put a table. That is considered data.

You should be using division layers (not div layers, even though the tag is <div> to design your website.)

8. Not closing tags or forgetting to write an opening tag

This is the part that a lot of people have, including long time web designers. A lot of times for long time designers it is just a mistake, but for those who are new, not closing a tag might distort the layout. This is probably the #1 solution I end up recommending when people ask me to help them out with their website.