In order to make my website, I had to suppress this feeling that I had to make it the “correct” way. I had to stop pitting myself against what I know professionals are capable of. That wasn’t doing me any favors. I’m just a hobbyist.
Sure, maybe I should compress these images more or load them differently. Maybe I should format my code this way instead of that way. But these “mistakes”—if you can call them that—are not terribly impactful. The worst outcome from what I’m capable of on the web is likely not that bad.
Websites don’t necessarily have to meet any standards or pass any tests to function. Standards validation only checks against expectations that may or may not be adhered to.
Each browser and RSS reader parses code differently from each other. And because I don’t do this for a living, I’m not aware of those differences. But I don’t want this to stop me from shipping something that doesn’t meet someone else’s standards for best practices.
Best practices are not minimum requirements.
I don’t think we should treat everything like a showstopper, especially when it comes to our own personal websites. Our blogs are allowed to have more-relaxed requirements than a Fortune 500 website.
Silence the imaginary backseat professional web engineer telling you that it’s not good enough to ship. It’s fine.