Kindle the #1 gift for dad.
So consistent with what you said before, you would pick what is most important on the page (as opposed to the company name or “home page”)?
Debbie
That is actually a horrible website to reference. I mean they still use tables for their layout…
and they don’t have h1, they only have one h2 but why justify what should be done with an example like this?
I still believe that you would use h1 reserved for company logo or business name…
And I said…
If you were re-writing Amazon.com’s home page, what would you make <H1>??
I never said what Amazon did was correct.
Debbie
That probably explains their spectacular failure as an online business.
True dat!! 
Debbie
P.S. If you want to see an example of a “spectacular website failure”, check out my thread here… 
I’ve been reading up on HTML5 and it is interesting to see the use of H1 elements here for example - Semantics - Dive Into HTML5
It seems the article element allows us to essentially have as many H1s as we wish. Whether it is a good idea or not I am not convinced but like all big movements on the web it’s what 99% of the designers will do or the software in the future will do for them.
Perhaps that site is outdated as I’ve not kept up to date on the HTML5 movement.
i’ve completely ignored it, and they’ve changed their minds seven times already, they’re nowhere near ready to be taken seriously…
HTML “5” is completely different matter. Headings are relative to specific elements rather than the entire page, that completely changes the ideal approach. Don’t bring HTML “5” into the conversation, by the time its done headings may be handled the same way as the current spec.
Yessir Boss.
I’d say that’s a bit of a misconception. You can put multiple <h1>s into a document, but the DOM will not necessarily parse them as <h1>s.
For example,
<body><h1> is structurally considered as <h1>
but
<body><section><section><section><h1> is structurally considered as <h4>
I think you’re better off saying it is considered structurally equivalent to h4 in HTML4. Otherwise it becomes mighty confusing in an HTML5 context.
However, that seems a little bit of a misconception by itself, because there is a conceptual difference in the nature and function of headings between HTML4 and HTML5.
I have to agree with oddz and Rudy, a page should only have one h1. I will disagree about oddz comment about making sidebars an h3 vs an h2 because you simply break the document hierachy. If you take out the content and look at the headings in the source, do they flow? That is do they go 1-2-3-4-5-6 relative to where they are? While I do agree with sidebar content is not important as main content, that is no reason to mess the tree up. Messing the tree up can lead to larger [accessibility] issues, and points to using whatever tag you wish (as mentioned and correctly dismissed earlier).
So that brings us back to my original post.
How do you markup disparate sections on a home page that do not logically link together in a hierarchy?
Are certain sections or side-bars more important than others? Yes. Is content in the middle column probably more important? Yes. But do all of the sections on my home page fit into a “logical hierarchy” or an “importance hierarchy”? No!
So how do you handle this?
That is the $10,000 question…
For now, I made my top section in the middle column an <H1>, and the section below that in the middle along with sections in the left and right column <H2>.
On all other pages - which are typically articles - I have the article heading as an <H1> - which usually mirrors the <TITLE> and then I have paragraph headings in the article as <H2> and the content is, of course, <P>.
Debbie
For me, a good rule of thumb is H1 & H2 should be limited to the main page data, H3 and beyond are a good starting point for sidebar information (though you shouldn’t need much beyond H3 or you’ve got too much in the sidebar…
To explain…
I typically think first in the context of the content of the document itself. I give the page heading (article title, group’s/person’s name, etc) the H1. I then give the section headings H2, and maybe (maybe) give a subsection a h3. I very rarely go beyond because if it needs those, the page is too convoluted and needs to be simplified.
For sidebar data, I typically give them H3 headings if I use them. They’re not as important as the main page content, and since I don’t find headings beyong H3 to be vital (or often needed), I’ll typically just stick with H3 as my sidebar baseline.
I guess I need to go back to school…I just have a hard time understanding the problem in deciding why a “Sitepoint Guru” has trouble deciding what the main topic/subject of a personal home page would be. Isn’t it about that person?! Things about that person? Interests about that person?! Surely one would want some kind of ‘definition’ about that person even if it is no more than “its” name, and then, get on with the major groups of interests/things/etc.
Frankly, when I first started reading this thread, I thought there was some major kind of problem with HTML hierarchy that had been discovered, instead it’s a simply comedy of opinions because a few people can’t think of a title of a personal home page. For cryin’ out loud, just call it “Home Page” and get on with the purpose of the page (assuming that has even been decided)! 
Who cares how a “personal home page” is designed, anyway? If you don’t have or care about any standards, why argue with those who do? I gotta go…:yawn:
to be fair, the title “Sitepoint Guru” is automatically assigned by the forum software as a default title when the person does not choose a customized title (there are several such default titles, depending on the number of posts)
Look at: H42: Using h1-h6 to identify headings | Techniques for WCAG 2.0- is about accessibility, but shows how heirachy makes your code better. Better - cleaner code is roughly more accessible from the start. Thus makes a happy Ryan, so why not kill a few birds at once?
Sounds good
For the <h2> bit do you mean
<h1>Buying your first computer</h1>
<p>bllah blah blah</p>
<h2>Windows</h2>
<p>bllah blah blah</p>
<h2>Mac</h2>
<p>bllah blah blah</p>
<h2>Unix</h2>
<h3>Ubuntu</h3>
<p>bllah blah blah</p>
It’s not usually that simple, and if it were my “personal home page,” I would care greatly about how it was designed. As for the question behind the thread, it’s made clear very quickly that it isn’t just about the question of naming a page, it’s about heading hierarchies, a legitimate point of discussion.
Hang on a minute…
Isn’t it true that the hierarchy of HTML tags is only really applicable in a linear HTML context? If so, that is all that is important.
It doesn’t matter where they appear on the page after layout has been styled into columns, sidebars, etc. The important thing is that they are in an optimum hierarchy for readers that only see the HTML linearly (screen readers, Google, etc).
So… lay out your HTML in the correct hierarchy, then move things around to wherever you like using css