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I didn't have one for the first couple years, because I didn't really need one and it would take quite a bit of time, but a couple (few, quite while anyway) years ago I finally put a site on the domain I decided to use, because I got tired of people asking me what I do and not really being able to explain it in under 5 minutes, plus I was often met with those 'I totally have no idea what you said, but I'll pretend I do anyway...', looks, so I decided to just send people to the site instead of trying to tell them...
Anyway, I figured it was time to learn some JS / AJAX when the design and content were complete, so I decided to write a couple of AJAXy functions to test it out and learn a bit more about how it works... Everything was working fine. (At least on the home page, which is about the only place I wanted them anyway... The other pages just had one of the functions as a 'bonus', but it didn't really matter if it was there or not to me, so it may have been working or not.) Then I changed hosts. Basically, one of the functions broke and the other for sure only worked on the home page.
It's been in the same state of 'not workingness' for about a year (I think?) and no one would ever really know the functions are broken, because they were 'just for fun, and to learn functions', and they don't effect the general use of the site, and I don't really care if they're there now, because I have plenty of other, better examples, so they were fun, and cool, but don't really matter to me any more...
Today when I decided to make a small change I decided to look at the functions... spent about five minutes, removed the commented out 'page-search' that broke, re-added the link to the JS function for the other one to all the pages. Checked the site... It didn't work on the inner pages... I'm fairly sure the one that did work doesn't work on the home page now, and I think I might just remove the call to it one of these days when I open the site so none of the functions are 'broken' anymore (LMAO)... I actually closed the site and moved on to another project before I decided what to do about it, so it'll have to wait now...
There's the story and the question is:
Do you ever find when you've spent hours (over months) on a site design, content and getting it to work, then for some reason those silly little, cool, but wholly unnecessary functions breaks, you think, 'oh well..', rather than fixing them?
I have found myself in a situation where a section of code just won't work as it should. Ended up having to take a back step and redo code that had been writen weeks earlier.
What I tend to do now is write a plan and follow it. If you plan in advance there is less chance of things coming back to bite you.
Mack.
What I really hate is when 3rd parties change an API or data format or so and cause your site to break to some point without you even getting as much as a heads-up: "hey we're going to change things, take care". And do that a year or two in advance so you have time to plan for it. They really ought to be nice and send along a simple "Here is what you need to do" to get it painlessly (just what *you* need to do, not an overly generic thing where the new complexity you don't care about is showing in all it's glory details).
I know what you mean... When PayPal switched it's buttons to 'hosted' I totally lost the 'shipping address required' portion of about 35 'add to cart' buttons on a site. Everything else worked fine, so it took me a bit to even figure out what happened or what to do to fix it. I don't remember getting a 'heads up' from them, but if I did the very specific instructions to me would have said: 'Just redo every single button you use to continue using our service. Thanks!' I'm glad there were only 35 or so...
Finally I gave up and walked away.
Half hour later, I walked away, again.
Two hours later, again, I gave up.
About 2 AM this morning came this big hoot . . . finally solved it.
Same with my own projects, once they are started.
My problem is, they go round and round in my head, it's a perfect plan, it will work. But it never seems to see it's first line of code. Maybe I need a trepanning to let all the ideas out.
No, I sure don't, something about me won't let it happen (obsessed, insane?) I can't let it go, just yesterday I was dealing with an unbelievable situation on one of those "full hosting companies" for a client; internal proprietary CMS/cart, no FTP access, no scripting, it's madness....
Same with my own projects, once they are started.
I think this is why I set the one I was referring to aside...
It *had* that kind of attention once or twice, then 'broke' when I moved it, and now I'm working on another one, a bigger one, a better one, a different one, and getting everything I have floating around in my head about the new one out of the way to go back to one which was already 'finished' (a couple times) requires a very large broom to 'sweep new ideas out of the way' and mine seems to be missing... LOL
I'm definitely with you on a 'new' or 'client' site, though...
I think I'm a bit ridiculous, because in addition to a 'new' or 'client' site 'havin questions that need answerin!', sometimes there's questions here I feel the need to find the answer to and it bothers me if I can't come up with something when I understand the question and it's about code or something I use regularly, or even might need to use or know someday.
