Website Coding Standards

4 November 2009
Why coding standards are important and which standards to adhere to.

When developing a new website or redesigning an old one, you need to know that your website is functioning as it should do and that the website code is sound. Web designers will have many stages of testing when developing a website to ensure that the various parts of the site work as its being developed but another part of the development is the coding standards.

There are various website coding standards and it is important to understand these as your website goes live as it will likely affect the search engine rankings of the site. These web coding standards are not noticable during development and also do not necassarily effect the functionality of a website so many web designers may not pay attention to coding standards.

The two main website coding standards are W3C and WAI and these should be considered if search engine rankings are important to your website. Some website owners are not interested in good search engine placements for various reasons and therefore coding standards may not be as important for that particular project.

World wide web consortium (W3C) compliancy

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organisation for the Web, which is known generally as W3C. The W3C maintain staff ensuring the development of standards for the world wide web and the future of the Internet.

W3C compliancy is important for websites needing high search engine placements as it ensures websites achieve specific high industry standards. Before the W3C consortium existed there was code that existed that was not compatible with various broswers and platforms which rendered various website and web pages in different ways so pages never looked consistant. W3C validation is a way of approving your website and ensuring it is in line with core principles which are supported by website designers around the world.

While it may not be always possible to keep your entire site W3C compatible, especially if you have a content management system in place, extra effort should be taken to try and ensure the homepage passes the W3C validation.

Web accessibility initiative (WAI)

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), sees accessibility of the Web via five primary areas, technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development. The WAI looks at the accessibility of websites paying special attention to disabled users. Sites that are coded well so that partially sited users can have web pages literally read to them will find this standard extremely useful.

When commisioning a new website or website redesign take care to ensure that your website designers adhere to one of these standards depending on your needs especially if your site needs to gain good search engine rankings.