It's all very well following my tips on keeping a blog or website valid, but checking that you are doing it right can be a pain. The W3C's HTML Validator is the best way to check, but there must be something easier and quicker.

Validation At A Click

Firstly, if you wanted an easy way to use the W3C validator for each of the pages in your site, all you need to do is put a link in your footer, like mine below, with the ref: http://validator.w3.org/ check?uri=referer. This link will take you to the validator automatically checking the page you are on.

Validation At A Glance

Even quicker and more useful than that link, in my opinion, is the HTML Validator extension for Firefox. HTML Validator is based on Tidy which was originally developed by the W3C and allows you to check the validity of your HTML with a glance to the status bar.

Install it and all you have to look for is the green tick in the bottom right hand side of your browser to know that your site is fine. If it's not, you can view the source of the page and the validator will highlight the errors.

This little extension has made my life much easier when trying to keep my pages valid, if you want to stay valid give it a try.

Thanks to blogjunkie for inspiring me to write this post, I hope it helps out.