So here I am with a brand new website, thinking I’m a knowledgeable user and all. I’m looking at this and fiddling with that, and oh, look! I see a plugin that was left from my previous website.
“Oh,” I say to myself, “I can deactivate that one. I don’t need it.” (cue ominous music foreshadowing doom….)
So I mess with a few other things and decide to look at my website. OMG!!!!! (cue music of crashing buildings or cars or something else noisy)
All I see is CODE everywhere! Crap! What did I do!?! What did I touch?!? Did I ruin my brand new website!?!
Send completely panicked email to developers with a subject of HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Decide to try it in another browser…look more closely…oh…wait…I know those tags. They’re from that plug in I have. Uh, the one I deactivated. Oops…..
Send apologetic retraction to developers. Feel really, really stupid…. Take a deep breath. And again.
Lessons Learned
In the hopes you learn from my mistakes:
- Know what you are doing before you touch something on your website. If you don’t know if it’s safe to touch, ASK your developer first! And make sure you have a back up of your site – please, please, please!!!!
- If it’s an experiment, or really any kind of change, TEST IT before you do 10 other things. Then you can change it back before you lose a bunch of work. (and I really should know this having worked in IT for 25 years)
- Make sure it really is a problem before you go shooting off notes (again, I really should know better having been the recipient of such notes)
- Recognize that I am not perfect, that I forget things I should know better than, and that it’s okay to be that way. It’s part of being human.
Now, back to my regularly scheduled day.
