If you aren’t into semantic markup, this may not be for you. If you love correct and valid markup, howeer, this may be a discussion you’ll enjoy.
An XHTML website can be coded using the following six levels of headers:
With each growing less important the farther down the list you go. Now, let’s get on with it.
First things first: go to your home page, hit view source, and count up the number of _h1_s you see on the page. How many do you see? (Hint: Control-F—Find/Search—for “h1” and see how many instances come up on the page.)
Some would say (the purists, as I see them) that there should only be one top level heading on each page of your website. But I think this is going too far. The W3C describes headings this way:
A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces.
I take this to mean that each section should have an h1 describing the content within (in some way). So instead of only one heading per page, now we’re looking at one h1 for the content, one h1 for the sidebar, etc.
Something that really frustrates me (and makes me pity the owner, honestly) is when the author takes the liberty of using strong and em tags instead of heading tags. They do this because they want a particular look, maybe they want no space below the line they want “heading” some paragraph… you get the idea. But what spits out onto that page, the result of this misguided author’s attempt at styling with structure, is structure-less.
If you should use a header, but your header doesn’t look the way you want it to, fix your styles. Don’t abuse the semantic markup.
Let’s say you blow off the semantic structure of a page. Let’s say you don’t care about what header you use where, or whether you even use them or not. There are three pains you’re going to feel before long:
I hope these ideas get through and provide enough inspiration for you at least start writing correct code now. As far as fixing past mistakes, well…Maybe wait for a rainy day with a few hours to kill?
Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments
[...] Headings and Structuring Your Pages – A boring semantic/code post. I’m actually kind of disappointed this post didn’t get a bit more feedback. Maks me think I’m alone when it comes to strict structure and standards. Are there any bloggers out there that still value it (aside from those who blog about it)? [...]
[...] each growing less important the farther down the list you go. Now, lets get […]Read More… [Source: Blogging [...]
How to borrow money to start up a business….
Borrow loan shark money. When you borrow money friendship will be harmed. Where can i borrow money….
Comments are closed since this post is older than 30 days. However, you can continue this discussion in our popular Blogging Forums
These are great tips.. Wish I had someone to do this for me