Here's an example of a short and simple e-mail leading to a lot of work.
Last Wednesday I received an e-mail with a request for a change to this Dutch website. The e-mail contained a single request, which would have been only a minute of work, if it wasn't for...anyway, I'll get to that. The request was basically to make a menu entry appear on the front page of the website (and maybe on more pages). Now, before I tell you about the work I ended up doing, let me explain some of how Adobe Dreamweaver works.
Dreamweaver is an application with which websites can be created and maintained. To simplify some of that work, templates can be used, but there's a quirk that I still find strange.
Whenever you make a web page based on a template, Dreamweaver only makes a note in the code of that page about the template the page is based on. In other words, the website itself does not use the templates. While Adobe undoubtedly have their reasons for letting Dreamweaver work this way, the drawback is that any changes to a template requires Dreamweaver to update all the web pages based on the edited template. With that understanding, let me get back to my story.
While looking over the website - I hadn't looked at it for quite some time until the request came in - I made the decision to remove the template I didn't need anymore. I made sure that the other templates had all the menu entries they would need to have, and then I searched for a way to switch the affected pages to another template. I searched Dreamweaver...the Adobe website...the web...all to no avail. That's when I thought,
"Bert...you just uploaded the latest changes, so you have a backup. Why not just remove the template you don't need anymore? After all, you did just find a function in Dreamweaver to have it look for broken links."
So, to use a Dutch expression, I put on my naughty shoes and just removed the template. I then had Dreamweaver look for broken links, repaired the first link...and that's when Dreamweaver surprised me by offering to repair any remaining links leading to the removed template. Good work, Adobe! I accepted the offer, updated the website, and I was done. That is...I was done as far as the aforementioned request was concerned. What else was there?
When I had Dreamweaver look for broken links, it found the broken links to the removed template...and then some. It found some more because of a change made by the hosting provider and because of something I forgot to do when I heard about it. Let me explain.
When I made the website for Zwembad De Ringberg, I named the starting page index.html. This worked fine until the day the hosting provider made a change to have the server look for home.html, instead. When I asked them about something that had been happening as a result of that, they made a change on the website so that you would still reach the front page by going to zwembadderingberg.nl. Wanting to use as less code as possible, I removed what they had added and then renamed the front page to home.html. Realizing that this would lead to any number of broken links, I again had Dreamweaver search for them, repaired the first link, and...you guessed it: Dreamweaver offered to repair the others, which I gladly accepted! Again, well done, Adobe!
As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. If you have any questions or comments, then please let me know in the form down below.
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