Don't forget to PREVIEW before you PUBLISH!

< Scheduled data center maintenance 4/11/2007

Using Extended Validation Security certification to our advantage. >

April 15th, 2007 at 9:17 am star

Hello.

I had an urgent issue from a customer Friday where the formatting of his site was all messed up. Turns out he was using cut and paste to place the content on his site and the source text had some hidden codes that were not "web friendly". This happens occasionally depending on the source of your text.

He was obviously quite frustrated and wanted it fixed immediately (rightfully so). I determined the likley issue and resolved it. I found out after that he did not "PREVIEW" his changes before publishing.

Here is the main point of this post. Using the "PREVIEW" feature to review the page before hitting the "PUBLISH" button may save you undue anxiety.

It's easy to get in the mode of hitting PUBLISH each time you make a change to your site because usually things look fine -- however it's important to remember to PREVIEW your changes each and every time you update your site to avoid a similar situation.

P.S. I am a big offender of this rule myself. So this is a reminder for myself as much as a helpful reminder for our Website Forge customers! :)

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

Posted in E-commerce, Tips and Advice, Website Design by Shane Merem

< Return to Post List

Brian says:

April 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am star

Edit

This is a good reminder. This is a good habit we all should develop. Lord knows I have made all kinds of goof ups dealing with this stuff.

CLR Marine says:

April 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm star

Edit

Great advise. Another thing to check is when you are adding a new page. The Add to Site Menu has a default of Top-Level instead of Do Not Add.
I have found most of the time you will not want Top_Level picked.

Terry says:

April 15th, 2007 at 4:14 pm star

It is important make sure you aren't cutting and pasting hidden code from the source. The best way to be sure of this is to paste it into Notepad first, then copy it from notepad and paste it into the frame. Norepad strips hidden code from the content.

Noah says:

April 15th, 2007 at 4:19 pm star

Hi Y'all, I'm the one Shane is referring to. I want to thank Shane for taking the time on his Friday night to trouble shoot the issue. I was in a panic, having sent out thousands of invitations to my site the same day. Shane found the problem code/text that I had copied from a text editor and once removed the site format returned to normal. Since then I have been previewing my updates every time. Thanks again Shane! Noah :)