The Internet’s Upper Class Or Why Your Site Should Be POSH

Posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

The Microformats Symbol HTML is great, anyone can make a website due to the simplicity of marking up a page and the leniency of web browsers. The idea that anyone could be on the lead to the huge growth of the Internet in it’s early days with personal pages and static sites popping up everywhere and again now with blogs and wikis.

As the Internet has grown so has it’s basis. HTML is much more than what IE or Netscape deem it to be, it has it’s own standards, it’s own structure and it’s own meaning. I’m not talking about the intricate complexities of Microformats, just about POSH.

Plain Old Semantic HTML

POSH encapsulates the best practices of using semantic HTML to author web pages. Semantic HTML is the subset of HTML 4.01 (or XHTML 1.0) elements and attributes that are semantic rather than presentational. The best way to learn and understand POSH is to do it.

POSH has been created to recapture the essence of semantic HTML, the simplicity and the benefits, and be equally simple and memorable.

I like it! When I read about it at Tantek Çelik’s blog I was so impressed. The idea is so simple it’s brilliant, get people to promote valid, semantic markup again.

So How Do You Get POSH?

The best thing I can do is point you in the direction of the POSH Checklist, but a quick rundown of the methods is:

Once you’ve made your site POSH, the next best thing is to get other people to do the same! So will you make the effort, make your website or blog POSH? It’s been around since 1998 (without even realising), so get on board and make the web a better place with POSH

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Comments

  1. 1April 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    Rory Says:

    Phil, I love the idea of validating - it gives me a curious feeling of security. I’m just a bit a lot in the dark about it.

    I put my site through the validate process, and it tells me I have errors, and gives me the line and column, and I haven’t a clue where it is or what to do about it.

    No happy ticks for me - just nervous ones!


  2. 2April 28th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    Phil Says:

    Hi Rory, I’m glad you’re interested in keeping your site valid too. I’ve dropped you an email with a couple of bits you can do to improve your site and make it POSH too!


  3. 3May 3rd, 2007 at 11:55 pm

    Bob Says:

    So I clicked the Validate link which fills in this blog and you failed :)
    Result: Failed validation, 3 errors

    Still better than the nearly 500 errors mine showed…


  4. 4May 4th, 2007 at 12:04 am

    Phil Says:

    Thanks Bob, only on this particular post would something like that happen!

    I think I’ve found the error, I started off using an <acronym> tag and ended with an </abbr> tag. If there are any more problems though, please let me know!

    500 errors! Surely you have put some effort into that! If you ever want a hand to try and lower that figure, feel free to drop me a line.


  5. 5May 4th, 2007 at 12:15 am

    Bob Says:

    I can use all the help I can get Phil :)


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