Outer Spice Buzz

I wanted to thank you again for all the great work you did for my website. It has received a lot of great comments lately and I even had a great website review in our local paper.

- Suzanna (Seacoast Kids Calendar)

You ROCK! Thank you so much for being so responsive. That's highly unusual in this day and age, and I just want you to know how much I appreciate how quickly you responded to our needs. THANK YOU!.

- Lisa (Let My People Know)

I've downloaded, modified, used, and generally learned many themes, and I have to say that this one is a pleasure to work with compared to some of the others. The site is clean, and Outer Spice is quick to respond and very helpful. The colors are very well chosen, and the ads are placed well. This is a great buy if you like the theme. I'm sure you'll be happy.

- Marty (thebloggerspost via ThemeForest)

[Socket is] one of the best WP themes (I just love the Aluminum skin!). Great work and definitely my next purchase. This theme is close to perfect!

- Th30d0r3 (via ThemeForest)

Outer Spice did a great job on our web site! Everything works the way we envisioned it. They have been very responsive to our needs, developed great solutions to some of our unique challenges and were a pleasure to work with. The site works smoothly, looks great and never crashes. We will definitely continue to use them for our current web site as well as on future projects.

- Rodney (RTM Consultants, Inc.)

[Socket] is a damn good template and will have saved me days and days over writing my own site. I love this theme - it's great.

- TwistedKev (via ThemeForest)

Outer Spice has played an instrumental role in helping consult and bring our ideas to life. The newly rebuilt and updated site gets rave reviews and helps us continue to sell work and grow our company. Outer Spice listens well, has vision and talent, and does great work!

- Cory (True North Landscaping, LLC.)

Good job, guys!! Other developers should learn from you how to do dropdown animations - they are PERFECT. Good luck with sales. I'm a perfection hunter, so I've noticed your themes.

- _freshface (via ThemeForest)

The professionals at Outer Spice Web Company did a wonderful job designing our website. They were very knowledgeable, listened to our input and responded quickly, turning out a website that really reflects our products line.

- Karen (Knit Happy)

Great work on the theme! I use a lot of themeforest themes, and yours is by far one of my favorites... clients are going to love it.

- Stacey (Lawlis Creative)

Just wanted to tell you guys what a beautiful theme you have created! I have purchased several themes because I was not able to find the one that would fit my taste. Your theme has everything I need.

- Bill (via ThemeForest)

Blogs We Actually Read

Sep

Your Site Does Not Validate

by Brian in Design

CSS, Themes, Validation, W3C, Wordpress, XHTML

markup

In working with Wordpress I have noticed a very common trend in the footer of most themes I come across. Almost as common as ending web markup with “</html>” is the practice of tacking on the “Valid XTHML/CSS” clause. Even when the markup is miles away from actually validating. It’s actually a peculiar practice to continue including these clauses in our page footers when A) our pages are not actually validating, and B) no one really cares if our pages validate or not.

Let’s perform a very scientific independent study to determine what percentage of sites out there validate. We’ll use the most popular themes in the official Wordpress theme directory. We’ll take a look to see if the web page makes the claim of valid XHTML/CSS, and then we’ll actually test it to see if it does indeed validate. And for the sake of science, we’ll give each site a final grade.

Disclaimer: I have fallen victim to the very thing I am chastising here, and I’m merely making an effort to change the collective ways of web developers. If you are the creator of one of these websites and you end up reading this because you saw an incoming link from this post, please keep in mind that there is a little extra snarkyness thrown in for dramatic effect. I think all of the websites in this post are very high quality and I am jealous of your skills

Green Park 2

view_greenpark

html_greenpark

css_greenpark

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Does the XHTML validate? No

Does the CSS validate? No

Analysis
This theme claims to have valid XHTML and CSS in the footer. However the claim is not linked anywhere, leading me to believe the designer couldn’t get his site to validate but still wanted people to think it did. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too. So, I plugged in his URL to both the XHTML and the CSS validators. Fail on both counts.

Grade

F

iNove

view_inove

html_inove

css_inove

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Valid XHTML? Yes

Valid CSS? No

Analysis
The CSS errors are actually contained in a plugin in the Wordpress installation, not the theme files. However, if you’re going to include the links in your footer, I don’t care where the errors are, make sure your page validates. Overall, this website actually does a fairly decent job of validating.

Grade

B

Pixel

view_pixel

html_pixel

Claims: XHTML

Valid XHTML? No

Analysis
This site says it has valid XHTML. And yet, when clicking on the link that boasts of this feat, I was presented with 6 errors in the markup validator. At least the designer did not include a “Valid CSS” link.

Grade

D

dfBlog

view_dfblog

html_dfblog

Claims: XHTML

Valid XHTML? No

Analysis
Here we find another claim for valid XHTML, yet are met with a plethora of errors when we actually take the designers up on their word. No valid CSS links could be found, but judging by the looks of things I wouldn’t be surprised if it failed in that area too.

Grade

D

Creamy

view_creamy

html_creamy

css_creamy

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Valid XHTML? No

Valid CSS? yes

Analysis
This is a visually compelling and beautiful website. It would have been perfect if they wouldn’t have blurted out in the footer that it was valid markup and CSS. While the XHTML did not validate, at least the CSS did, and for that this website got a little higher grade.

Grade

C

Melle Wynia

view_mellewynia

html_mellewynia

css_mellewynia

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Valid XHTML? No

Valid CSS? No

Analysis
From Melle’s website:

I’m Melle Wynia, a webdesigner from the Netherlands. I design and create websites with Passion.

Well, Melle, passion or not, your website doesn’t validate. You should either fix it so that it does, or remove that statement.

Grade

F

Splact

view_splact

html_splact

css_splact

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Valid XHTML? No

Valid CSS? No

Analysis
Where to begin, where to begin. First of all, neither claims were true – not valid XHTML or CSS. And again the claims in the footer weren’t even linked to anything. Why don’t we all just write whatever we want on our websites and magically they will come true? How about, “Outer Space Web Company – blogging since 1874″. Oh, wait. Well you get the idea. But the worst part of this website is that it is the site of a web developer. They should know better.

Grade

F

Cordobo

view_cordobo

html_cordobo

css_cordobo

Claims: XHTML & CSS

Valid XHTML? No

Valid CSS? No

Analysis
This has to be my favorite. It’s the personal website of a freelance web designer who designed some of the most popular Wordpress themes on the market. He has a very nice, minimalistic website. However, he states that he is:

…a freelance webdesigner, xhtml/css coder & webstandards lover based in Mannheim/Germany…

The problem? His page does not validate in either category.

Grade

F

It’s not that I’m a stickler for page validation. But I do have strong feelings about following through on things. If you are using valuable page real estate to boast of your markup validation, please make sure your page actually validates. If it was up to me I would abolish the practice of including this verbiage on web pages (because seriously who cares?). But since it’s not up to me, and people will continue to do it, Outer Spice will continue to tout the links in our footer. But we don’t write checks our butts can’t cash. Here’s proof of our validation:

html_outerspice

css_outerspice

Grade

A+

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