w3c.org problem in validation?

All these years my blogs and sites had a link below W3C XHTML 1.0. This used to validate my blog / site for XHTML 1.0 Strict. Today, when I click on this, it gives me 404 - The requested URL /check/referer was not found on this server.

I tried looking up the site w3c site but to no avail. Anyone else facing this problem? Any solutions?

Their FAQ says:

Update: I checked their site and found that the url seems to have changed to -
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer
If I validate my blog now, it gives 36 errors all for using

 
Do I change to   everywhere?

Code (markup):

This very frustrating. Still awaiting a solution.

 

  is a character entity so there's no reason the W3C validator should be flagging it as an error. However, it's a bad idea to use the namespace anyway, especially to pad text (that's what padding and text-indent are for).

It's a presentational entity that's best left without.

 

Dan, the code in question was this -

<p> &copy; Copyright 2006-2007 <strong>Satish Talim</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;

        Page Updated: 1st July 2007 | Design: <a href="mailto:ealigam@gmail.com">Erwin Aligam</a> | Valid: <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">XHTML</a> | <a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer">CSS</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href="http://rubylearning.com/">Home</a> | <a href="http://rubylearning.com/privacy.html">Privacy</a> | <a href="http://rubylearning.com/sitemap.html">Sitemap</a> </p>

PHP:

Can I just insert spaces instead of   ?

 

One space, yes. But any more than that and the browsers will ignore it.

If I may make a suggestion, you have a list of links in your footer. It'd be more semantically appropriate to use an unordered list for them (like a regular menu), but when you style it to look how it does now, reference the ID of the footer DIV (If present) instead of adding a class or ID to the list.

 

I'll second that on the UL - in fact I would be asking the question: "Is that a paragraph? No it is NOT, so why are you styling it as a paragraph?"

I'd probably use two UL's, one for each 'side' because THIS:
        

is ALWAYS a /FAIL/ hard.

I'd also remove the word copyright since you have the symbol - copyright copyright? Isn't that just a LITTLE redundant? (you see it all the time, it's still #DDD)

Something like:

&copy; 2006-2007 <strong>Satish Talim</strong>
<ul id="pageinfo">
	<li class="first">Page Updated: 1st July 2007</li>
	<li>Design: <a href="mailto:ealigam@gmail.com">Erwin Aligam</a></li>
	<li>Valid: <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">XHTML</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer">CSS</a></li>
</ul>
<ul id="subnav">
	<li class="first"><a href="http://rubylearning.com/">Home</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://rubylearning.com/privacy.html">Privacy</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://rubylearning.com/sitemap.html">Sitemap</a></li>
</ul>

Code (markup):

Lose the <p> because it's NOT a paragraph, and put each into an unordered list. Set the UL and LI's to display:inline, set the LI's to have a border-left:1px; except for .first, and put equal margins left and right on both with white-space:nowrap; - that way if the page is wide enough to show both it will space them apart on the same line, but if it gets too narrow it will show as two lines, both centered. (assuming the container is set to text-align:center; - I'd have to see the whole code live to be sure)