The video that is shown in the home page of the thesis theme is a sales pitch for the theme. In that video the co-creator of the Thesis theme – author of Copyblogger says how other wordpress themes sacrifice clean code in the name of good looks. He says we need valid code in order to rank well in the search engines.
I am a regular reader of Copyblogger. I was a member of his TeachingSells membership website. I have a great deal fo respect for him. But that statement by him disappointed me. Why? Because its wrong and outright misleading.
Brian has a lot of authority and respect among bloggers. It seemed like such a blatant misuse of his authority. Its almost as if he is reading the script some web designer gave him.
What is Validation?
The world wide web consortium (W3C) is the organization that sets the standards for the web. They created the HTML standard and the XHTML standard. The HTML standard is evoling.
HTML is a very forgiving language. Unlike languages like PHP, C++, you don’t have to write the code exactly as per the HTML specification in order to get the page to work in web browsers. Therefore people who wrote websites took a lot of liberties with the way the code was written.
Then there were the browser wars. Internet explorer and Netscape Navigator defined some unique syntax for code that works only in their respective browsers. Web designers used the tags supported by one or the other browser in their websites. A browser that doesn’t understand the code meant for the other browser would just ignore the code.
The W3C attempts to bring some order to the chaos by setting the standard for HTML that all browsers should support and support it in the exact same way. The idea is to get web designers to write XHTML code and then get the browsers to interpret and display the code in the exact same way. After 10 years they still don’t do that.
The W3C has created an application called the W3C validator that you can use to validate your website’s page against the XHTML Strict standard. The standard that we would ideally follow in creating web pages. When XHTML Strict standard is adopted all over the web it makes the job of web designers easier.
Validation Doesn’t Matter
Most people will say ‘very little’. I feel its more appropriate to say no just to fight the hype. It doesn’t matter at all. The former is a politically correct answer. The answer you give to avoid arguments the comment section on how it matters.
Validation doesn’t matter in the real world. Contrary to the arguments of many web desginers valid code doesn’t guarantee that your website will display consistenly across all browsers. XHTML valid code is not easier to crawl by search engines because your code validates.
It is entirely possible to create a page that does validate against the W3C validator and yet be completely confusing and inaccessible to the search engines.
Validation Is Snakeoil
Those who sell valid HTML code are selling snake oil. Valid HTML is a something elitist web designers to charge clients extra. They misuse their status as a expert on web development and mislead their clients and take their money.
They go as far as to attach valid code on a website to having good reputation on the Internet. That your website invalidates against the W3C validator is insignificant. The only people who will know whether the website validates or not are other web designers. Its your choice whethter to shell out extra money to get valid code on your website aimed at Telecom companies to keep a good reputation with web designers.
Validation Benefits
Valid code has no real world benefit other than to impress web designers. Your website visitors won’t notice a difference between a web page that is XHTML valid and one that isn’t but displays the exact same code. Validation is just a bunch of artificial standards we use to judge the code of a website.
What about chris brogan and the other authoritative bloggers?
You see, Brian Clark has many allies. Very popular authoritative bloggers they all are. All of whom have some vested interest in helping Brian clark out with the promotion of Thesis. Oh wait they are all affiliates! Find posts that mention Thesis on their websites and you will find the links of the text Thesis theme are all affiliate links.
Is The Thesis Theme No Good?
No. Not at all. The idea of providing an user interface to customize the font, layout, and so many other aspects of a design is new. I highly appreciate Chris for that.
Brian however makes sweeping statements about the quality of the code in other wordpress themes.You know why he does that? Because it’s a sales pitch!
You can’t expect him to say:
“Most wordpress themes are a suck.However there are some designers who write clean code and provide free wordpress themes with clean code. And our theme may or may not be better than the other themes. That is why we want to shell out $47.”
Why Do People Buy The Thesis Theme?
You can get all the benefits that comes from buying the Thesis theme AND your own unique look from other web designers too. But it is the lie that people tell themselves that their website is now being powered by a supercharged Ferrari engine that gets them to buy and recommended the theme.
The benefit of of switching to Thesis is marginal in terms of onsite optimization. Crystal clear on-site SEO optimization is not going to race you to the top of search results like the way it is shown in the video. It puts you in a JUST GOOD ENOUGH situation. It means there is nothing wrong with your website that prevents the site from being read by the robots.
That will almost never happen with free WordPress Themes. Actually it will NEVER happen. If a theme made it into the WordPress theme repository then the theme has passed the WordPress moderator’s quality guidelines. They don’t let just about any awfully coded theme into the repository.
Search engines are very good at reading and understanding bad HTML code. They have been doing this for the past 10 years. They did it in the dark ages of web design back in the early days of this decade when code was much worse than it is now.
They had better be good it otherwise most of the web (which will not validate against the W3C parser) will be inaccessible via the search engines! And for sure Google isn’t going to shove your code through a W3C parser to determine where to rank you. Their search engine will LOSE if they make everyone on the web validate against the W3C validator.
Should You Buy The Thesis Theme?
Yes if you see value in being able to customize the look and feel of the website using the Administration panel. No if you want the theme to help you rank better in the search engines. It can’t.
Some of the thesis theme i saw is premium..
But i also saw some thesis theme that are free..
Its very confusing.