Why say you comply, when you don’t?

We’ve come a long way since our birth 3 years ago, we’ve picked up new skills along the way and have improved the service we offer our clients 100 times over. One thing that was brought more to our attention when we took on our first employee was Web Standards.

Its something we have never looked at before as we were so busy doing the work we didn’t have time to check if it complied with w3 standards.

But what do web standards mean? Do i need them on my website?

Well in a nutshell – no – but they do make things easier for both the search engines and coder/developers to work with!

Here’s a brief explanation about web standards from Wikipedia

“Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods.

Many interdependent standards and specifications, some of which govern aspects of the Internet, not just the World Wide Web, directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and web services. Considerations include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites.”

Sticking to web standards just means that you are not going to exclude anyone or anything from browsing your site and spidering it successfully.

So what has this got to do with the title of this blog post?

Well, ive already said that you don’t actually NEED to stick to web standards to run a successful website, but what’s prompted me to do this blog post is the amount of websites we find that SAY they comply with web standards, yet don’t.

If you are not going to abide by these standards then don’t put the badge on your site saying you do – it only makes you look like a BIMBO!