Hi,

I'm a big fan of Atahualpa and have created several sites with it. :-) I love it!

So my question arises from listening in on some discussions about which 'framework' type theme is 'best'. 'Someone' said that as soon as they discovered that Atahualpa was based on tables they rejected it as an option. Why would a person conclude that? Someone also said that tables were 'bad' for SEO.

I don't know enough about how Atahualpa is structured internally to know if any of this is relevant. How does Atahualpa differ internally to other theme frameworks? Why did Flynn make the choices that he did?

Looking to be better informed...
Sharon

I used to be a no tables guy but have since changed my stance on them. From what I can determine tables are not this evil SEO enemy and can help quite a bit in layout of pages. CSS can be fragile at times and until CSS 3 is in full swing (which may address some of the layout issues) I will use tables at times. IMHO SEO relies more on good titles and good article writing then on whether or not you use tables. Just my two cents.

Thanks for your comment. :-) I was hoping I might get some feedback from the theme designers too. Hint? There's this whole thread on Linkedin which has been going on for a month. A few people are taking a very adamant stand that anyone who uses a tables based theme (Atahualpa in particular) is a fool because it is so outdated. Does Flynn have plans to change the structure? Does he think this isn't the issue that others do and those few people on Linkedin are just making a lot of noise over nothing?

What is the big deal with tables????

What is the thread at Linkedin called? I would like to take a look.

Hi Larry,
The thread is in the Wordpress group and it is titled, "Is Thesis theme really worth it?" I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.
Sharon

long ago I use to be a COBOL programmer(and Basic, Fortran, RPG PLI etc) there was a movement to code without using GOTO's. I actually wrote a program withoug a sincle GOTO in it. AAnd I'm ashamed to admit that I did it. Even I had a hard time figuring out what I did. A well placed GOTO was was worth it weight in (virtual) gold.

The point is that there are different tools that can be used for every job, and differend methodologies. Computers are so fast these days, that people time is more costly than the speed of the CPU. If spped of page loads is the most important thing, then you should be coding static pages with something other than WordPress.

People reject things because of some bias they have wether reasonable or not. With the way's the rules that the search engine's use change so frequently, I'd be willing to bet that any absolutely accurate rule for SEO today will be out of date in 3-6 months.

ok, that's my $.02

I appreciate your $.02. Helps a lot!!

I jumped into that LinkedIn thread too. Just got a reply:

The point is not what Atahualpa can do or has done, but how it breaks with both WordPress and W3C guidelines, principles and standards by relying on tables for layout.

SMASHING MAGAZINE: In an article about why not to use tables for layout, you see this statement: "You’re in table hell when your website uses tables for design purposes. Tables generally increase the complexity of documents and make them more difficult to maintain. Also, they reduce a website’s flexibility in accommodating different media and design elements, and they limit a website’s functionality." Read More: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009...l-to-div-hell/

CONSIDER:
- Example site in Atahualpa ( http://princevillegolfvacationrental.com ) shows 47 mark-up validation errors, some relating to use of tables in the W3C markup validator here: http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...nrental.com%2F

This renders the site "invalid." Will it display in a number of browsers ok today? Probably. Will it in the near future? To answer that, look up "deprecated" as used by W3C to phase out old code.

Again... bottom line is that you can manage content in WordPress easily -- its forte -- but sooner or later you need to align yourself with technical standards. Learn them yourselves, or simply follow a checklist as a guide for compliant programming standards, and then work with a technical colleague when needed.

If he's right and the webworld will move away from supporting tables fairly soon, I hope Flynn is taking this into account for both Atahualpa and Themeframe. Can't judicious use of DIV markup replace tables quite nicely?

I saw that. I checked the validator tool he referenced. Kind of cool. Although I'm still not getting where it could be said that all those errors were the result of a tables based website.

Just for giggles, I decided to validate one of my Atahualpa sites (www.foleyo.com) and it generated 33 errors. Fair enough. Guess I'm invalid. Then I decided to run this anti-table-guy's website (www.webfadds.com which I was able to get from his profile) and his site generated a WHOPPING 87 errors. YIKES.

I guess he's invalid too. LOL

Lesseee....More invalid sites:

twitter.com (87 errors)
facebook.com (41)
linkedin.com (13)
cnn.com (68)

and..

http://diythemes.com/thesis/ (although they did do pretty well with just 7 errors)

The bytesforall.com site also did pretty well with only 8 errors.

So far the only site I tried that has passed the validation test has been w3.org itself. LOL

what is interesting is that if you do a validation of that article, you come up with 17 errors!