My experience with WordPress is that I'm always receiving numerous validation errors when using a plugin, existing theme or sometimes just down to feeds. The quick solution would be to do everything from scratch but time dictates a bit as well as budgets.

 

The question I'd like to ask my fellow WDF buddies is this: how important is validation to you? For me it's a no-brainer and I'd like to get everything to validate (not fussed about warnings - as long as I understand what they mean). HTML takes priority for me. Ideally I get CSS as up to speed as possible, but it's not always realistic. Just wondering whether I should abandon ship, admit defeat and let a site skip validation or not.

I think it's more important the site works well and is presentable and accessible on all browsers (and devices) than a few validation errors.

As long as there are just a few.

Agree with @teodora

 

I never bother to validate any more. I cross-browser test as much as humanly possible to ensure maximum compatibility with mobiles/tablets and desktop browsers but validation is something iv not done since about 2008.

Validation is just guidelines. But it’s good guidelines. There’s no problem with having a bunch of errors If you know why. Example back when we were coding in xhtml strict I would have a bunch of errors because the “target_blank” attribute was not allowed, but knowing that every browser would process them anyway it was safe to ignore those errors.

I totally agree that the validation process is about guidelines but equally it's important that everything works well 'as per designed' across all browsers. There's always someone to spoil the party (I'm looking at you Internet Explorer) but I think in this case it's across the board. I will still adhere to validation as much as possible, but will turn a blind eye and let it slide a bit on the errors I have with WordPress.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

Nillervision said it better than me.

Vailidation is as has been said an ideal but not 100% necessary. Its useful to test the site for major issues, but especially Wordpress sites are rarely perfect.