Instant Fixing the Error Establishing a Database Connection in WordPress

If you have been surfing the web for a while, you have at least seen this error a few times. Error Establishing a Database Connection is one of those curses that could be caused by many reasons. As a WordPress beginner, this could be awfully frustrating specially when it happened on its own without you changing anything. We ran into this issue yesterday on our own site. It took a little over 20 minutes to detect and fix the problem. While doing the research to find possible causes, we realized that there was no good article that covered everything. In this article, we will show you how to fix the error establishing a database connection in WordPress by compiling a list of solutions all in one place.

Note: Before you make any database changes, make sure you have sufficient backups.

Why do you get this error?

Well in short, you are getting this error because WordPress is unable to establish a database connection. Now the reason why WordPress is unable to establish a database connection can vary. It could be that your database login credentials are wrong or have been changed. It could be that your database server is unresponsive. It could be that your database has been corrupted. In our experience, majority of the times this error happens because of some sort of server error however there could be other factors as well. Lets take a look at how to go about troubleshooting this problem.

Does the problem occur for /wp-admin/ as well?

First thing you should do is to make sure that you are getting the same error on both the front-end of the site, and the back-end of the site (wp-admin). If the error message is the same on both pages “Error establishing a database connection”, then proceed onto the next step. If you are getting a different error on the wp-admin for instance something like “One or more database tables are unavailable. The database may need to be repaired”, then you need to repair your database.

You can do this by adding the following line in your wp-config.php file. Add it just before ‘That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging’ line wp-config.php.

1	define('WP_ALLOW_REPAIR', true);

Once you have done that, you can see the settings by visiting this page: http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

Remember, the user does not need to be logged in to access this functionality when this define is set. This is because its main intent is to repair a corrupted database, Users can often not login when the database is corrupt. So once you are done repairing and optimizing your database, make sure to remove this from your wp-config.php.

If this repair did not fix the problem, or you are having trouble running the repair then continue reading this article as you might find another solution to work.

Checking the WP-Config file

WP-Config.php is probably the single most important file in your entire WordPress installation. This is where you specify the details for WordPress to connect your database. If you changed your root password, or the database user password, then you will need to change this file as well. First thing you should always check is if everything in your wp-config.php file is the same.

1	define('DB_NAME', 'database-name');

2	define('DB_USER', 'database-username');

3	define('DB_PASSWORD', 'database-password');

4	define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Remember your DB_Host value might not always be localhost. Depending on the host, it will be different. For popular hosts like HostGator, BlueHost, Site5, it is localhost. You can find other host values here.

Some folks suggested that they fixed their problem by replacing localhost with the IP. It is common to see this sort of issue when running WordPress on a local server environment. For example on MAMP, the DB_Host value when changed to the IP may seem to work.

1	define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1:8889');

IP’s will vary for online web hosting services.

If everything in this file is correct (make sure you check for typos), then it is fair to say that there is something wrong on the server end.

Check your Web Host (MySQL Server)

Often you will notice this Error establishing database connection when your site gets swarmed with a lot of traffic. Basically, your host server just cannot handle the load (specially when you are on shared hosting). Your site will get really slow and for some users even output the error. So the best thing you should do is get on the phone or livechat with your hosting provider and ask them if your MySQL server is responsive.

For those users who want to test if MySQL server is running yourself, you can do a few things. Test other sites on the same server to see if they are having the issue. If they are also getting the same error, then most definitely there is something wrong with your MySQL server. If you do not have any other site on this same hosting account simply go to your cPanel and try to access phpMyAdmin and connect the database. If you can connect, then we need to verify if your database user has sufficient permission. Create a new file called testconnection.php and paste the following code in it:

1

<?php

2	$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', 'password');

3	if (!$link) {

4	die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());

5

}

6	echo 'Connected successfully';

7	mysql_close($link);

8

?>

Make sure to replace the username and password. If the connected successfully, then it means that your user has sufficient permission, and there is something else that is wrong. Go back to your wp-config file to make sure that everything there is correct (re-scan for typos).

If you cannot connect to the database by going to phpMyAdmin, then you know it is something with your server. It does not necessarily means that your MySQL server is down. It could mean that your user does not have sufficient permission.

In our case, our MySQL server was running. All other sites on the servers were working fine except for WPBeginner. When we tried going to our phpMyAdmin, we ended up getting the error:

#1045 – Access denied for user ‘foo’@’%’ (using password: YES)

We got on the phone with HostGator and their support quickly found the problem. Somehow our user’s permissions were reset. Not sure how that happened, but apparently that was the reason. They went back in and restore the permissions and we were able to get the site back live.

So if you get the access denied error in either connecting to your phpMyAdmin or through test connection.php results, then you should contact your host right away to get them to fix it.

Solutions that Worked for Others

It is important to note, that these may not work for you. Use at your own risk and make sure that you have sufficient backups if anything goes wrong.

Deepak Mittal said that his client was getting the error that database needs to be repaired. Even after repairing the database, the error did not go away. He tried various things and at the end, the issue was the site url. Apparently that was changed which caused the error to persist. He ran the SQL query by going to phpMyAdmin:

1	UPDATE wp_options SET option_value='YOUR_SITE_URL' WHERE option_name='siteurl'

Make sure to replace YOUR_SITE_URL with the actual url example: http://www.wpbeginner.com. The wp_options will be different if you have changed the default WordPress database prefix.

This seemed to fix the issue for him and few others that commented on his post as well.

Sachinum suggested that he was able to connect the database with testconnection.php, so he changed the wp-config.php user to the root user. WordPress started to work perfectly fine. Then he reverted the settings back to the database-user, and it continued to work. He could not figure out what was wrong, but concluded that it was a typo.

Cutewonders suggested that they removed the content of active_plugins in wp_options table and edited the contents of recently_edited. Basically that seemed to fix the problem. 

We read on numerous sources that users simply uploaded a fresh copy of WordPress and it fixed the error.

This is a really frustrating error. What have you tried that seemed to work for you? We would be happy to expand on this resource, so others do not have to waste as much time finding a solution.

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Why Do Pro Bloggers Choose Adx with Comparison of Google Adsense?

Google AdSense is a plug-and-play solution for publishers to quickly make money off of web and mobile assets. It’s also a great way to monetize a niche blog, for example. But as your traffic quality and reputation improve, you may be invited to join the big boys club – Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Also known as AdX in short.

The question you are probably asking yourself is this: Which will bring me more revenues? Some sources claim publishers have seen a 30% percent increase in overall ad revenues with AdX instead of AdSense.

But before you rush to fill in the fields of a Google signup form, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you and checked and studied the issue.

So, what’s the answer to this big life altering question? The answer, as it often is, is: it’s different for every publisher.

Not what you were hoping to hear? Sorry. If you’re a faithful reader of this blog then you know by now…no quick wins.

But which ad inventory sales option is right for me you ask?

Ok. Fine. Read on and we’ll figure it out together.

Key Differences Between AdSense and AdX

If you’re a little lost as to the difference between Google AdSense and AdX, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Google lists the differences between the two in a comparison table, but as Google tends to do frequently, they leave it open for interpretation.

In a nutshell, AdSense is an automatic smooth rider and AdX is your stick shift manual speed racer. One will get you from point A to point B, while the other offers more control for better overall yield.

Your solution of choice might drive your revenues where you want them, or it could break in the middle of the road and leave you hitchhiking for user donations. Or worse. That’s why we want to help you choose wisely.

1. Who Sets The Price and Pays

AdSense is the publisher side of AdWords, an advertising network owned by Google. AdSense includes search ads on Google Search, ads in Google products (like Gmail, Blogspot and YouTube) as well as GDN, the Google display network – that’s where you offer your ad space.

With AdSense, Google basically buys all the inventory offered to it by publishers, pricing it according to the bids set by advertisers for each ad, campaign and keyword.

From the moment you paste that ad unit code on your site, your AdSense units will never be empty (unless you have a technical issue affecting your AdSense setup).

But your RPM will depend almost entirely on Google’s contextual ad serving algorithm and retargeting ads. No matter how hard you optimize your AdSense metrics, you won’t be able to set a floor price for ads served on your site.

So if you’ve hit a revenue ceiling with AdSense (after trying all our many optimization tips) – you might want to consider driving stick for a while. Who knows? You might actually like it.

On the other hand, Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange is a programmatic RTB exchange with many players, including brands, agencies, arbitrage buyers and sellers, as well as different advertising networks (including AdSense!).

You get more demand sources for your inventory and can control who gets to bid on it.

With AdX you set the floor prices for your inventory and buyers compete in a lively auction on who gets to display that ad on your page. If you’re getting dollar eyes like a cartoon character now, we’re not surprised.

At first, this may seem like a golden opportunity to increase your revenue fast, but it’s not as simple as that.

If your floor prices are too high and your inventory is not as attractive as that of your competitors – you might end up with lower earnings than you would have had by using AdSense alone.

2. Who Needs What and When

According to Google, the main difference between the two monetization tools is the target audience. While AdSense is a kind of one-stop-shop for ad-based web content monetization, AdX is aimed at publishers who also sell inventory directly, as well as established brands and eCommerce sites with a lot of quality traffic.

That’s not all. AdX also allows broader blocking options to prevent inventory cannibalization, and of course, to stop competing brands from advertising on your site. No one wants to discover their competitor is stealing their hard-earned quality traffic from under their nose.

As you may have realized by this point, AdX requires a lot more maintenance and time investment than AdSense in order to be really profitable. There are quite a few new terms, techniques, and variables to learn if you want to adopt Google’s ad exchange (or any other ad exchange).

AdX lets you build advanced rule-sets and flows for specific advertisers, use direct deals routed out of the exchange and dynamically allocate inventory and pricing on your ad space and projected traffic.

For example, if you see that an advertiser has targeted you on AdX and you’re getting a lot of impressions for their ads? You can contact them directly (kinda) and offer them more for a higher price. Something you cannot do with AdSense.

Why would they agree to pay more? Because you can guarantee that they get the targeting they want with the placements they want, and whatever other criteria matching they request.

Bottom line, they’re guaranteed a quality ad impression. Next in your ad stack are, what’s called, preferred advertisers, and AdX can compete with them using dynamic allocation.

Yes, it’s pretty complicated and takes time and expertise to be effective. So if you don’t have direct advertisers, relationships with ad networks and exchanges, and you don’t have the knowledge, time or manpower to dedicate to AdX optimization then it really isn’t for you. You’ll actually find yourself making less money from it. 

3. Ad Units – More or Less?

One of the main differences everyone seems to talk about is the number of ad units in each of the monetization tools offered by Google to publishers.

In short, AdSense permits up to three ad units per page, while AdX allows up to five ad slots. In theory, you can boost RPMs significantly by increasing the number of ads on each page. But that’s theory. Reality check, you should be able to optimize your RPM with 3 ad units while maximizing your RPM.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the differences to find the facts.

The first thing you must remember is that users still hate ads. Don’t overegg your ad pudding or you’ll find your audience arming themselves with ad blockers or just abandoning you altogether.

So having more ads won’t necessarily boost your RPMs and it definitely won’t improve your most important metric – RPV (revenue per visitor).

But if you have long content pages having more ad units per page may save you having to use “floating” ads.

The limit for AdSense ads per page remains the same even if you use AdX. What this means is that if you use the maximum 5 ad units per page (on desktop), but only 3 can be filled by AdSense. The rest will have to come from other buyers in the exchange and guaranteed or preferred advertisers.

4. Revenue Share

Google is pretty straightforward about how much it’s making off every click on AdSense. Publishers (that’s us) get 68 percent of what the advertisers pay for every click with display ads. And just 51 percent with AdSense for search.

With AdX it’s different. Don’t tell anyone we told you this but if you have a large enough website that offers great content then you may be able to negotiate your revenue share with Google. That’s probably why you hear rumors that AdX will offer you a higher rev share.

It’s only true if you have a very large website and a dedicated Google account manager.

Although offering ad space on AdX is time consuming and complex, this difference in revenues can be very significant with large websites with a lot of traffic and clicks.

5. CPM vs CPC

In AdSense, you get paid for every click on an ad. Kinda. What you’re actually getting is a share of the revenue from Google, and Google gets paid in CPM (cost per millenia – 1,000 impressions). They later translate that into CPC.

With AdX it’s pretty much the same. Bids and floor prices are set in CPMs, so you get paid for impressions rather than clicks, even if the ads you display are fallback AdSense ads, meaning that AdSense ads only get displayed after more lucrative ads like ones sold directly.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim for a high CTR. Advertisers aren’t all stupid, and if they see that traffic from your site doesn’t convert – they’ll take their budget elsewhere.

6. Advertiser Relationships

Advertisers who get good performance on your page with AdX, will want more of it. What you want to aim for is direct sales to brands and advertisers yearning to appear before the eyes of your reader audience.

You can offer them your well performing ad placements and units for a premium, and sell the remnant inventory through AdX and other ad exchanges. That way you can attract new advertisers to your online property, and upsell premium placement to advertisers who’ve bid on your remnant inventory and got good results.

7. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP)

If you’ve been researching AdX, you’ve probably come across Google’s ad server for publishers – DoubleClick for publishers. With DFP, you can let AdX compete against other ad networks, and divide the traffic between demand sources in the most profitable way for you.

It’s a management platform for publishers with multiple demand sources for ad space, and if you are one or trying to become one – you should familiarize yourself with DFP.

DFP is a free cloud service, but its implementation can be challenging and not cost effective for small blogs without a dedicated ad broker.

The verdict

There are quite a few advantages to AdX over AdSense, but your potential to increase revenue by moving to AdX depends mostly on your needs, size, your advertisers, capacity, and technical expertise. And before all that, it also depends on being accepted to AdX by Google.

That alone is enough to be the bane of your online existence. Is your site right for AdX or is AdSense the best Google can offer you for web traffic monetization? If you have direct advertisers making it worth your while to spend the time on constantly optimizing AdX – Yes.

If not, you’ll probably end up with low fill rates (empty ad units) and make less money than you would have with AdSense.

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Cross-Browser Compatibility and HTML & CSS Validation

We all know the importance of checking our web pages with multiple browsers, especially when we are designing a new layout for a website. This is the case even if we are writing validated standards-compliant code. The number of extant browsers we need to check with are enormous: Internet Explorer ("IE") 6 to 11, the current version of Firefox, the current version of Chrome (or Vivaldi, which uses the same code), the current version of Safari, and so on. And then there are the different platforms: Windows, Macintosh (Mac), Linux, etc. The problem for most people is that multiple versions of certain browsers cannot co-exist with each other, the most notable example of this is IE for Windows. Unless you happened to have multiple computers, this presents a certain difficulty for the average webmaster. This article suggests some ways for you to run multiple versions of multiple browsers on one computer.

Note that this article is written primarily from the point of view of a person using Windows (the majority of people reading this article), although it does address the issue of Mac browsers and Linux browsers as well.

Firefox and Seamonkey

It's possible for different versions of Firefox and Seamonkey to all co-exist on the same machine.

If you did not already know, Mozilla Firefox and Seamonkey use the same Gecko rendering engine. As such, if you have one of these browsers, you probably don't need to install the other to test your site.

It is easy to make multiple versions of Firefox and Seamonkey co-exist with each other. Install them into separate directories and create a different profile for each browser you install. (For non-Firefox users, this browser allows you to create different profiles so that you can store different settings for different situations.)

To create a different profile for Firefox, simply start Firefox with the following command line:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox" -ProfileManager

Once you've finished creating profiles, you will want to create shortcuts (Windows terminology) to run the different versions of the browser. This makes life easier for you: you can simply click the appropriate icon for the different versions, and it will load using the correct profile. To specify which profile the browser is to load, put the profile name after the "-P" option.

For example, if you have created a profile named "currentfirefox", your command for running the current version of Firefox with that profile may look like:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P currentfirefox

Similarly, your command to run the Firefox with a profile called "oldversion" may look like:

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox" -P oldversion

And so on.

I'm not sure that you really need all the different implementations of the Gecko engine to test, though. I personally only test my sites with latest version of Firefox since my site design tends to be simple.

Chrome, Vivaldi, Opera and Safari

Google's Chrome browser, the Vivaldi browser and the current version of Opera all use the same engine. In general, you can expect that the vast majority of people who uses the Chrome browser will be using the latest version, since that browser automatically updates itself whether you want it or not. As such, I tend not to bother to test my sites with earlier versions of Chrome.

You can get Chrome from Google's Chrome site and Vivaldi from Vivaldi.com. Since these browsers use the same engine, if a site works with one browser, it should probably work with the other.

In addition, the Safari web browser share a lot of code in common with both Chome, Vivaldi and Opera, since all four ultimately derive their engine from yet another browser called Konqueror. This similarity will diverge over time, since the engine for Safari is being developed separately from the other three. If you are feeling lazy, you can probably get away with testing under any one of the four for now, although if you really want to be thorough, you probably should install Safari in addition to one of the other three. All four browsers can coexist with each other on the same computer.

Internet Explorer

For most sites, IE users probably comprise the majority of visitors, despite the inroads made by the other web browsers. Now that Microsoft has made Internet Explorer automatically update to the latest version (via Windows Update), chances are that more and more of your visitors will be using the latest version.

Unfortunately, in spite of this, there are still a few users sitting on old versions of the browser. For example, IE 6 is still being used by some people running Windows XP. Although this number is dwindling rapidly, at the time I write this, there are still enough visitors using it for some websites that webmasters feel obliged to continue to support it. (The actual percentage varies from site to site, depending on the target audience of each site.)

My experience in coding thesitewizard.com and thefreecountry.com, both of which depend heavily upon Cascading Style Sheets ("CSS") for layout, is that IE 6 and 7 are very different animals from the other browsers or even the later incarnations of IE. Contrary to what you may expect, what works in IE 11, Vivaldi, Firefox and Safari will not necessarily work in IE 6 and 7. IE 6 has numerous bugs in its engine, causing sites that are correctly coded to break under that browser. In other words, if you want to support IE 6 and 7, you need to have those browsers installed somewhere so that you can test with them. You can't just assume that your site will look fine in those old browsers.

Unfortunately, you can't install more than one version of IE. The bulk of IE's code does not get installed into its own subdirectory (or folder) but into Windows' system directory. Although there have been unofficial solutions available for some time among the webmaster community for installing different versions of IE into the same Windows installation, there are various peculiarities in the end result, and the IE versions you get from that behave slightly differently from the standard versions when installed normally. As such, I don't really recommend those "solutions". Instead, if you feel you really need to test with old versions of IE, you should probably try one of the following methods.

Method 1: How to Run More than One Version of Internet Explorer on a Single Machine: Using a Virtual Machine

The official Microsoft-sanctioned method of testing with multiple versions of IE on one computer is to install a virtual machine.

Loosely speaking, virtual machine software allow you to run another copy of Windows within your existing version of Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or whatever. The virtual machine software pretends to be a new computer, and Windows gets installed into a small space on your hard disk which the software uses to mimic an entire drive.

Microsoft provides pre-activated copies of Windows with various versions of IE in virtual machines free of charge to web developers who need to test their sites in Internet Explorer. The pre-activated Windows expires periodically, so you will need to download a fresh copy from time to time.

You will also need to install one of the supported PC virtual machine software that can run those pre-activated Windows machines. For Windows users, this is either Virtual PC, VirtualBox or VMWare Player, all of which are free, and can be found on the Free PC Virtual Machines and Virtual Machines page. Mac OS X users can use either VirtualBox (which is free), Parallels Desktop (a commercial program) or VMWare Fusion (also a commercial program). Linux users can use VirtualBox.  

Once you've installed both the virtual machine software, and the virtual machine from Microsoft, all you have to do is to run it. This will give you a copy of the appropriate version of Windows with a matching version of IE, which you can use to surf to your website to test it.

Note: Microsoft has terminated its support of Windows XP on April 2014, so it's possible that they will stop providing virtual machines containing XP and Internet Explorer 6 eventually. If that's the case, it will no longer be possible for you to test IE 6 unless you have your own copy of Windows XP. I personally hope that when we reach that date, the number of IE 6 users will be so small that it's no longer even necessary for anyone to bother to test with that desperately obsolete version. You will still be able to test with IE 7 and above though, at least until the version of Windows that comes with those versions stops being supported.

Method 2: How to Run Two or Three Versions of IE on One Machine By Dual or Multi-Booting

This method is not recommended unless you have special reasons (other than testing websites) for needing to dual-boot or multi-boot. It is more technically demanding, disruptive, time-consuming and uses more hard disk space.

For the technically inclined, another way to run two versions of IE on a single machine is to install multiple versions of Windows on that machine, each in its own partition. In plain English, this means that you need to divide your hard disk into (at least) two sections, called "partitions". Then install different versions of Windows into different partitions. You may have to modify your Windows boot menu to support all of them, or use a third party boot manager. (Sorry for the vagueness in this paragraph, but I don't envisage many people to actually need to use this method, and those who do, already know how to do all this.)

How to Test Mac Browsers

Nowadays, you don't actually need a Mac to test Mac browsers, since the default Mac web browser, Safari, and alternative browsers like Firefox and Vivaldi have Windows equivalents.

Having said that, I'm not 100% sure if browsers display things exactly the same way in Windows as in Mac OS X, even if they are the same brand. That is, I'm not sure if (say) Safari for Windows displays things identically with Safari for Mac OS X. However, I think that for the most part, where my sites are concerned, the way they render things is sufficiently alike that I don't need to bother with specially getting a Mac just to test the sites.

Before you ask, although there are things such as free Mac emulators, which are software that run in Windows but pretend to be a Mac and thus can run Mac software, they are not particularly useful from a webmasters' point of view. The working Mac emulators tend to emulate the old obsolete Macs, not modern ones.

In any case, as I said earlier, you shouldn't need a Mac to develop a website that works on it. Just check that your website has valid code and test your website in the Windows versions of Safari, Firefox and Vivaldi, and you'll probably be fine. If, however, your site requires absolute precision in the positioning of its text, images and other elements, and you want to make sure it looks correct on a Mac, you will have no choice but to get a real Mac to test it on.

Testing Linux Browsers

One of the easiest ways to test your site under Linux is to run Linux from a CD or DVD. There are numerous Linux "live" CDs around; see the Free Linux LiveCD Distributions page for a list of them. These allow you to simply boot your machine from the DVD/CD directly into Linux without having to install anything onto your hard disk. Essentially, all you have to do is to download an ISO (which is just an image of the DVD or CD) of the Linux distribution, burn it to your CD or DVD, put it in your CD or DVD drive, and restart your computer. The computer boots from the media and runs Linux without installing anything on your hard disk. From the DVD (or CD), you can run many Linux applications, including the Linux version of Firefox and Konqueror.

If you are feeling lazy, and you have installed an emulator or a virtual machine, as mentioned above, you don't even need to burn the ISO to a CD. You can simply use the virtual machine to boot the ISO — your copy of Linux will then run in the virtual machine. Or, if you prefer, you can also directly install Linux into the virtual machine.

Yet another alternative is to install Linux on your hard disk, using one of the many free Linux distributions around. You can set it up so that it co-exists with Windows (ie, dual-boot). Make sure you have space for a new partition on your hard disk, install it and you're done.

The default browser that comes on many Linux distributions is Firefox (although not necessarily so). However, you will find that even though Firefox tries to render your page the same way under all platforms, the fonts available under Linux are different from those available on Windows. If you don't code your fonts in a cross-platform compatible way, your site may end up being rendered with an ugly font. For example, if your site only specifies "Arial" or "Impact" or some Windows-specific font, since these fonts are not available by default under non-Windows systems, your site will be rendered using either the default font or some other font that the browser thinks matches what you've specified.

If you don't want to bother to run Linux to test, be sure that you at least:

1. Test your pages under Firefox for your platform.
2. Specify alternative fonts for your web pages. For example, don't just select a font like "Arial" in your design. Specify alternatives as well, should Arial not be available, like "Helvetica" and a final fallback, something generic like "sans-serif". If you don't know how to do this, please see my article on choosing fonts for more information.

Whether you design your web page using a visual web editor 

 like Dreamweaver or KompoZer, or you code HTML directly with a simple text editor, the generally recommended practice is to validate it after you finish designing it.

This article discusses what validation means, points you to some of the free tools that you can use, and deals with its limitations and the problems that a new webmaster may face.

Note: if you are not sure what HTML and CSS mean, please read What are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Perl? Do I Need to Learn Them to Create a Website? before continuing. Otherwise you'll be completely lost here since I assume you at least know what these terms mean.

What does Validating HTML or CSS Mean?

For those unfamiliar with the term, "validating" a page is just a jargon-filled way of referring to the use of a computer program to check that a web page is free of errors.

In particular, an HTML validator checks to make sure the HTML code on your web page complies with the standards set by the W3 Consortium, the organisation ("organization" in US English) that issues the HTML standards. There are various types of HTML validators: some only check for errors, while others also make suggestions about your code, telling you when it might lead to (say) unexpected results.

The W3 Consortium has its own online validator which you can use for free. It may be found at: http://validator.w3.org/

A CSS validator checks your Cascading Style Sheet in the same manner. That is, it will check that it complies with the CSS standards set by the W3 Consortium. There are a few which will also tell you which CSS features are supported by which browsers (since not all browsers are equal in their CSS implementation).

Again, you can get free validation for your style sheets from the W3 Consortium: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

There are numerous other validators around, both free and commercial, focusing on different aspects of your web page. You can find a list of free ones (including specialised validators like those that check your code for accessibility) from the Free HTML Validators, CSS Validators, Accessibility Validators page at 

http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmlvalidators.shtml

Why Validate Your HTML and CSS Code?

There are a number of reasons why you should validate your page.

It Helps Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform and Future Compatibility

1. Although you may be able to create a web page that appears to work on your favourite browser (whatever that may be), your page may contain HTML or CSS errors that do not show up with that browser due to an existing quirk or bug. Another person using a different browser that does not share that particular bug will end up viewing a page that does not show up correctly. It is also possible that later versions of your browser will fix that bug, and your page will be broken when people use its latest incarnation.
   Coding your pages so that it is correct without errors will result in pages that are more likely to work across browsers and platforms (ie, different systems). It is also a form of insurance against future versions of browsers, since all browsers aim towards compliance with the existing HTML and CSS standards.

Search Engine Visibility

1. When there are errors in a web page, browsers typically try to compensate in different ways. Some may ignore the broken elements while others make assumptions about what the web designer was trying to achieve. The problem is that when search engines obtain your page and try to parse them for keywords, they will also have to make certain decisions about what to do with the errors. Like browsers, different search engines will probably make different decisions about those errors, resulting in certain parts of your web page (or perhaps even the entire page) not being indexed.
   The safest way to make sure the search engines see the page you want them to see is to present them an error-free page. That way, there is no dispute about which part of your page comprises the content and which the formatting code.

Limitations: What Validation Does Not Do

Validating your web page does not ensure that it will appear the way you want it to. It merely ensures that your code is without HTML or CSS errors.

If you are wondering what the difference is, an analogy from normal human language will hopefully make it clear. Let's take this sentence "Chris a sandwich ate" which is grammatically incorrect when used in a non-poetic context. It can be fixed by simply reversing the order of the last two words so that the sentence reads "Chris ate a sandwich".

But what happens if you write a sentence that says "Chris ate a pie" when you meant that he ate a sandwich? Syntactically, the sentence is correct, since all the elements of the sentence, subject ("Chris"), verb ("ate") and object ("a pie") are in the right order. Semantically, however, the sentence describes a different thing from what you meant.

HTML and CSS validators are designed to catch the first type of error, exemplified by the grammatical error of my first sentence. So if you write HTML code that has (say) the wrong order, the HTML validator will spot it and tell you. However, it cannot catch errors of the second kind, where you get the spelling and order and all other technical aspects correct, but the code you used does not match the meaning you intended.

Ensuring that your code does what you want it to do requires you to actually test it in a web browser. Depending on the complexity of your code, you may even want to test it with different browsers to make sure that your site looks the same in all of them, since it's possible that you are using features of HTML and CSS that are only implemented in some browsers but not others.

What to Do If You Don't Know HTML and CSS

If you have designed your site using a visual web editor, and are not familiar with HTML and CSS, you will face an additional problem.

While running the validator and getting it to validate your page itself will not be an issue (since the W3 Consortium's validator is not only free, it doesn't even have to be installed to be used), the problem comes when the validator checks your page and tells you that there are errors.

If you have no knowledge of HTML and CSS, you will probably have some difficulty figuring out what those errors mean, whether they are serious, and how to fix them.

Although there is no perfect solution to this, you are not completely without resources.

1. If you are using an editor like Dreamweaver, Microsoft's Expression Web, KompoZer or BlueGriffon, you can usually assume that the code they produce on their own is valid. From my limited experience (mainly creating demo sites for the purpose of writing tutorials or reviews for thesitewizard.com), these four editors seem to create correct HTML and CSS code.
   This means that if you get errors when you validate your page, the problems must come from elsewhere. If you have inserted code that you obtained from a website (such as if you have added a Youtube video to your page), it's possible that the code is the source of the error message.
   Alternatively, if you have modified the code on the page manually, the error may have crept in there.
   Having said that, sometimes the error is benign. For example, if you have added XHTML code to a page that has HTML, you may or may not get validation errors since you are mixing 2 different HTML families that have slightly different conventions. As far as I can tell, for the most part, this kind of error does not cause any problem for either browsers or search engines.
2. Another way is to search the Internet for the solution. For example, you can copy and paste the error message given by the validator into a search engine, and see if there are any websites out there that talk about this particular error. This may not be as fantastic an idea as it first appears, since their solution may be too general to be helpful for your specific problem, unless the error message is the result of your pasting code from some popular source (like Youtube or something of that level of popularity).
3. A third way is of course to ask someone, whether it's someone you know personally, or someone on the Internet. This solution also has its own issues, since you may get a solution that creates a bigger mess of your page than it had in the first place. It all boils down to their competence and willingness to spend enough time figuring out the problem.
4. Finally, you can also ignore the problem. If you want to do this, you should test your web page in as many web browsers you can to make sure the error message does not diagnose a problem that causes visible issues. If you find that your site seems to work fine in spite of the error, you may decide to just ignore it and hope for the best.
   Although this solution is not ideal, you may be forced to take it if you can't find an alternative. It's not ideal because the error may bite you later when you least expect it, for example, when there's a new version of some web browser that chokes on the bad code. It may also cause problems in a non-visible manner, such as in the way the search engines index your page.

How Often Should I Validate?

Some people validate every time they make a modification to their pages on the grounds that careless mistakes can occur any time. Others validate only when they make a major design change.

I always validate the template for my pages when I make a major design change. I try to validate my pages each time I make modifications, although I must admit that I sometimes forget to do so (with the occasional disastrous consequence; Murphy's Law doesn't spare webmasters).

I find that having an offline validator helps to make sure that I remember to validate: having to go online just to validate my pages tends to make me put off validation till later, with the result that it'll occasionally get overlooked. For those not familiar with the terminology I use, when I say "offline validator" I simply mean a validator that I can download and install in my own computer so that I can run it on my pages without having to go to the W3 Consortium's website. You can find offline validators on the free validators page I mentioned earlier, that is, http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmlvalidators.shtml

The HTML Tidy validator (listed on that page) is available for numerous platforms (including Linux, Mac, Windows, etc) and has proven helpful to many webmasters the world over.

Final words: 

It's a good idea to test your site with multiple versions of multiple browsers, particularly if you plan to do anything fancy with style sheets on your site. This doesn't mean that you have to support all browsers — for example, the pages on thesitewizard.com do not work with very old browsers. However, when you are able to test your pages this way, you can at least reduce the number of problems your pages have with the different browsers. The tips in this article allow you to test with multiple browsers even if you have only one machine. As I mentioned above, it's generally a good idea to validate your web page. It will point you to errors that may affect how your website is understood by web browsers and search engines. Even if you are not familiar with HTML and CSS, there are still some ways you can deal with the errors that you discover from validating your page.

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Easier Methods to Get PerfectTech Resume for Entrepreneurs

The era is based on technology and global market depends overcome of technology. There are plenty of examples online, and some built into word. Pick something that is a single page- you are writing a resume, not a CV, and recruiters don't have the time or patience to hear your whole life story.

Get PerfectTech Resume for Entrepreneurs 

 “A powerful resume should leap off the page saying, ‘Me! I’m the one you want to hire!’” advises software engineer Gayle Laakmann McDowell in her book The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Any Top Tech Company. She says that every line in these documents should have value and contribute to convincing the employer to hire you. That said, below are 15 tips from McDowell and others on creating the perfect tech resume.

1. Focus on accomplishments: Focus less on your job duties in your last job and more on what you actually accomplished, with an emphasis on tangible results (increased app sales revenues by 20 percent, developed software that reduced costs by 10 percent, etc.).

2. Quantify results: Avoid saying general things like “improved customer satisfaction,” “increased company profits,” or “reduced number of bugs.” Instead, provide quantifiable metrics that demonstrate how your work helped your company save money, reduce costs, improve customer service, etc.

3. Target your resume: Gone are the days of sending one generic resume to hundreds of companies. You should target each resume to the specific job listing and company.

4. Don’t get too technical: Technical terms, sales and marketing slang, and acronyms that are commonly used at one company may be like a foreign language to recruiters or hiring managers at other companies. Make your resume universally understood by using industry-recognized terminology and explaining anything that recruiters might find confusing.

5. Be concise: We’ve all heard the stats about hiring managers tossing resumes that have just one typo. Although tech companies tend to be more forgiving, that’s no reason to submit a grammatically incorrect, misspelled, and otherwise poorly presented resume.

6. Be clear, and structure your resume well: Try to think like a recruiter when creating your resume. Provide the information recruiters want so that they don’t throw your resume in the trash pile. For example, if you worked as a software engineer at a top company such as Microsoft or Intel, stress the company name rather than your job title, since that will impress the recruiter the most.

7. Ditch the “objective”:  Use an Objective in your resume only if you are straight out of college or want to bring attention to the fact that you want to transition to a new role (for example, moving from a position in software engineering to one in sales). An Objective can also be a drawback because your stated job interest (mobile software developer) might convince the recruiter that you’re not interested in other lucrative and rewarding positions (user interface engineer, Web developer, etc.) he or she needs to fill.

8. Don’t be vague in your “summary”:  If you use a Summary section, be sure that it’s filled with key accomplishments (backed up by hard numbers), not vague pronouncements about your detail-oriented personality, strong work ethic, etc. Some people rename this section “Summary and Key Accomplishments.”

9. Think accomplishments over duties: Work experience is a key component of your resume, but it should not feature a comprehensive list of all the jobs that you’ve held (especially if you’ve worked in the industry for years or had many jobs). List the most important positions that will show the hiring manager that you’re qualified for the new job. Provide the largest amount of detail for your current or most recent job (or the one that is most applicable to showing that you’re qualified for the new position). Be sure to list your accomplishments, rather than just job duties. Again, think about what the hiring manager wants to see to convince him or her to call you in for an interview.

10. Minimize your “education” as you gain experience: Professional experience matters more than education in the tech industry, but it’s important that the Education section effectively conveys your educational background. If you have a nontraditional degree that recruiters may not be familiar with, be sure to offer a one- or two-sentence description of the major. Recent graduates should list their GPA only if it’s at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale (of course, omitting your GPA may raise a red flag with the recruiter). Recent graduates should also list any college activities or awards that they believe will help them land the job, but they shouldn’t list everything they did while in school. Finally, the rule of thumb is that the Education section shrinks as you gain experience. Eventually, it will simply list the bare essentials such as university name, location, dates attended, degree earned, etc.

11. Don’t forget the skills: Tech workers should be sure to include a Skills section on their resume. This section should list software expertise, programming languages, foreign languages, and other applicable skills, but it’s a good idea to skip basic skills (such as Microsoft Word) that many applicants have. The key is to list skills that will help you land the job.

12. Go big, and keep the little for later: When considering what to include on your resume, focus on the “big,” and save the “little” for the job interview. This means you should detail big, eye-catching accomplishments such as new products and technologies that you helped develop, major employers (such as Google or Amazon) that you worked for, major customers that you interacted with, and increases in sales, profits, or productivity that you contributed to. Be ready to provide the details regarding these accomplishments and background information during the actual interview.

13. Use keywords: At its employment web site, Microsoft advises applicants to detail on their resume how their experiences (leadership roles, work duties, school activities, etc.) helped them to grow as a person and as a professional. This is a good approach, since you always want to show that you are evolving as a person and eager to learn new skills. Also, use keywords that match those listed in the job announcement. For example, if you’re applying for a position in e-marketing and search engine optimization, then your resume should include these terms. This will help you get noticed by resume-scanning software and advance past the first screening stage.

14. Use your name: If you send your resume as an attachment, don’t name it “resume.doc” or “resume.pdf.” That’s the surest way for your resume to get lost among the thousands of other submissions. Instead, name the file starting with your last name, then your first name, then the date. And add the job identification number if one is available.

15. Use tools and follow the directions: Some companies such as Microsoft offer resume-building tools for job applicants at their web sites. These tools will help you determine what you should and should not include in your resume. Be sure to use these tools, if offered. And follow instructions to the letter. Google, for example, requires applicants to submit their resumes in PDF, Microsoft Word, or text formats. It also requires that all application materials for U.S. jobs be submitted in English.

Final Words: 

My final suggestion, just get somebody super honest to review your resume. Or better yet, get more than one somebody to review your resume. They should check for relevance, spelling, syntax, etc. It's preferable that you choose somebody who also knows you fairly well, because they can sometimes remember gems that you've forgotten to include. Take their feedback as a gift; if they are tough than they probably want to help you succeed. So, don't forget to say thank you!

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