[Kieran]

It pretty much speaks for it's self. It's my personal website where I publish my blogs, photos, guides, software, cv and schedule. I've also got a few quirky things incorporated into the design and back-end code which personalise it in a big way.

It's powered by WordPress and while the core code has not been modified there are a vast range of plugins (most self authored) to make it do what it does.

I've taken a while to put this post up here because I didn't think too many people would be interested but I've seen a few comments in threads on here after people used the link in my profile to check it out so I thought I'd make a place where people could post their comments

Personal Website of Kieran O'Shea

[VisualCreation]

Nice site man, should use a nice design at top but apart from that love it.
Thumbs up

[Kieran]

Yeah I just wanted something simple at the top so just chose the URL in coloured image form but you're not the first person to suggest having some kind of personalised design at the top instead of the current banner, I'll look into it. Its a new year after all

[midweb]

Hi Kieran It displays ok in firefox but in IE6 the right column, with photo's drops down to the bottom of the page, and thats on 1280x1024 full screen

[Kieran]

So it does! It doesn't do it on every page but it definitely does on the homepage.

Not being a windows user I'd never have noticed something like this. I'll look at the stylesheet and see if I can apply a fix. While my XHTML validates I have noticed that there are some errors with the CSS so this might have something to do with it.

[midweb]

I tried validating one of my sites but theres so many errors I wouldnt know where to start, what I dont understand is that it displays ok anyway, and ranks alright on google so I dont know wether I should bother.
Mick,
P.S. Stirchley Home Page for Stirchley Birmingham

[Kieran]

Validation is all about standards. A set of standards compliant browsers should render standard compliant code in exactly the same way, essentially meaning every user out there sees the same content presented in the same way.

In addition to thi,s validation makes parsing your content easier so for say, visually impaired people having their screen read to them, its easier for their reader to understand the page and read it to them correctly and in the manner that you as the author would have read it to them yourself. Things like alt tags in images are a classic example of this - if you can't actually see an image a screen reader will read the alt tag to you describing what the image shows giving you a more complete idea as to the content of the page.

Therefore I would tend towards ensuring my pages validate as far as possible. It is usually possible to choose a HTML/XHTML version that suits your application best and as such should be easy enough to write to as a standard.

As for how you get your page to validate if you already have errors, basically you have to handle each error one at a time. Looking at the validation page for your link for example, I note that you could get rid of at least one error by adding a / before the > on line 3.

If you need help validating pages etc. feel free to post up in general and I'm sure many a web dev will be happy to assist. I certainly am.

[gary64]

Well as Kieran is so generous with his advice I reckon we should have a competition to see if we can design him a new logo for the top of his website!

With that in mind you'll find my entry at the following url ...

Kierans new logo entry!

I've based it on your three main loves (as far as I can tell!)

You'll recognise one image in particular - I pinched it from your gallery - hope you don't mind!

[Matt]

LOL Thats really good Gary.

[Kieran]

Wow, I'm really touched - thanks Gary, that logo is really great! I think you have me pegged down pretty well in images

Seeing as the gauntlet has been thrown down I'll hold off loading Gary's logo onto the site in case others want to try their hand. Failing that though, Gary's will be the new logo for my site for sure.