08.15.07
Learning From One’s Mistakes in Web Site Development
Learning From One’s Mistakes in Web Site Development
Developing a Successful Catholic Web Site is a Process of
Correcting Errors and Learning
Web development since 2004
When our web site was referred to Judy Walker and her
network of classes in SEO Techniques, we did not know
anything about web site development. In fact, enrolling
our web site at S.R. Emerson’s HTML classes elicited only
many error issues found primarily in our home page - the
index.html page. It took a lot of trial and error moves
in order to get the right coding done and to clean up
the code in such a way as to make it load faster in the
web browsers. It was also difficult on our part to just
remove links from our link partners at the home page
because we would not want to break the link relationship
with them.
Breakthrough through WordPress
OUr home page had this issue for many years and we did
not want to spend any further in terms of hiring SEO
professionals or web design masters. What helped us
solve our basic issue with the home page was the idea
that our Yahoo! Web Hosting starter package gave us:
the idea of having a blog’s index.php as your home page.
We thought of this very carefully and we wanted also
our loyal subscribers to have a choice between using
this new home page and the original one. We actually
followed the move made by Yahoo! when they introduced
a new format for their email and their My Yahoo! page.
WordPress solved many issues
Since Yahoo! Web Hosting gives its subscribers the
opportunity to make a blog its home page, then we took
this opportunity and created a WordPress web log to
act as our “front home page”. It solved these issues:
web design was made simpler through a template provided
by WordPress; the simpler design also made it easier
for pages to load in many browsers; [the idea of the
Zenit format - wherein titles are presented first in
a list and then when clicked leads to a paragraph that
details the item - also helped a lot]; and most of all,
with this WordPress template, we are assured of a format
that would be easily accorded a standard rating by the
web consortium.
Much more still needed to be corrected
A lot of pages in the web site are still in need of
much correction. We also found out that when a link
is broken and then you copy this broken link unknowingly
to other pages of your articles or blog posts, then it
will register as a page not found in the browser of
your readers. This is why it is needed to be very
careful when creating and developing web pages. One
broken link can lead to many, many pages containing
that broken link. It would be hard to detail all of
those pages - especially if they are too numerous to
correct - but something can be done in order to help
one’s readers and visitors with finding the information
they need from your site. And this can be solved by
creating a very good 404 not found error page.
If success is a journey, then learning is one
assurance that we shall reach our destination
We may be speaking only of web development and in
correcting the errors we find in our coding and in
our pages, but when we are faced with an obstacle,
or with a problem, or with a dilemma, or with an
“error” message that really tests our patience,
then all we need to do is to be open to learning.
Openness to learn from situations such as the ones
enumerated above will give us the assurance of
success - just as faith gives us the assurance of
things unseen.
