TIP: Before you submit a site for review do this...

[Tim]

Tip: Before you submit a site for review here do this..

Check your site at http://www.sitereportcard.com and keep tweaking until you get 'perfect' on all checks.

Check your site at http://validator.w3.org and don't stop tweaking until your site validates. Flash insertion probably exempt(?).

Check your site on http://www.instantposition.com for the first 5 of your keywords.

Check your site on http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp (Moderator note: Greyed out as this site was reported as down as of 10-07-2010)

Survive these and the world is your mollusc, if your site looks good too.

By following these tips (and others?) you will focus your reviews on the appearance of your website instead of the objective problems.

There maybe site checks I've missed but surely they will be listed below.

Good Luck.

[info202]

what an excellent post! it will be very helpful to those asking for reviews.. because sometimes it;s not that easy to see all the problems a site has.

Great suggestion...

[matauri]

Bootboy , this advice was too valuable to let slip through the boards.

For all those requesting a Site Review, this is an excellent course of action to take!

If you have any questions about any of the problems you might encounter, ask in the appropriate forums:

Validation & Design - Site Design

Accessibility - Accessibility & Usability

Optimising your site for Search Engines - Search Engine Discussion

Better websites makes for a more enjoyable Internet experience! :-)

[Webnauts]

Bootboy and everyone else, I deny using Bobby, since his reports are not 100% valid.

For example when using empty or null alt tags, e.g alt="" or alt=" " with non-meaning images, as blind or spacer gifs, you do not pass priority 1 of the W3C/WAI WCAG 1.0, even if you really do.

More: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/....html#adef-alt

Try CynthiaSays. That is an accessibility validator I can trust.

For Mark-Up and more, see here: http://www.webnauts.net/check.html

[debtfree95]

This is really great , this Bobby site I am hearing for first time, I will have to go through it to comment on it.

Thanks for great post.

[Ceallach]

Bootboy, thank you so much for posting those sites. Wonderful useful information.

Ceallach

[SteveF]

Wish I had read this Topic before I put my site up for review, thanks for the links to test the site very useful.

[kcire]

Hello all ya !

I have been looking into the websites you should visit before submitting a website for reviewing and discovered that all websites I have learned to love and like since I joined the www-community don't pass any of these tests with 'perfect' as a result. So why is it so important to pass all these tests ?

Even the http://www.sitereportcard.com website that is mentioned as a site you should visit before submitting will not pass the tests....

I am very curious !
Thanks,

[Tim]

kcire, your observations are very pertinent and your question valid.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and others, have, over the years, developed various languages/technologies with the aim of creating compatibility amongst the dozens, if not hundreds, of browsers in use. Without the rules the internet would become too chaotic and an inevitable exclusivity would develop. How many times have you seen 'Best viewed in IE5+ at 800x600'? What about blind people with text browsers or Netscape users?

As with national languages, if you want to be interpreted correctly by most it's a good idea to speak or write clearly. Unlike spoken or written languages which are full of variations and subtle nuances, the languages of the web are interpreted by unintelligent machines! Whilst the browser writers have developed ways around errors like missing end tags or quotation marks, errors at best slow down load time or at worst turn pages into dog's dinners! The browsers appear finally to have agreed a level of compliance, for everyone's benefit. As web designers we should celebrate this because it frees up our time to focus on the most important issue which is the content, layout and functionability of the sites we build.

You are right about http://www.sitereportcard.com/ and the warnings it generates. Also check http://www.google.com and my favourite sites like http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/. Even the best designers get it wrong sometimes but that's no reason to not bother ourselves. Either they'll get it right or the <DOCTYPE> will be adapted to accommodate worthwhile developments.

Those working on the biggest sites don't need to worry too much about search engine placement but poorly put together sites do less well in the search engines for good reason. Chances are the content is suspect too. Would you buy a computer from a website that pops up error messages? Would you credit a scientific theory if it was peppered with spelling errors? Probably not, so Google et al will probably bury them deep. OK, so you don't have to get 'perfect' on all of the tests, sometimes it's impossible but you can still have a good go at it.

I haven't been visiting this forum for very long but I noticed a lot of sites submitted for review contained sloppy errors and typos. So I posted some useful links that I use myself (these days!) because I reckoned most people submitting sites actually wanted constructive observations about their layout and navigation, speed to load and usability. The validation, accessibility, spell-checking and search engine readiness tests are objective and are best dealt with by unintelligent machines!

I hope this answers your question.

[Presentationrentals]

Thank you for the above site analyzers.

Perhaps we could alter the statement from:
“Check your site at http://www.sitereportcard.com and keep tweaking until you get 'perfect' on all checks.”

To
“Check your site at http://www.sitereportcard.com and keep tweaking until you fix as much as you can.”