Kieren’s techie blog

There are few things that will make your site look more unprofessional than users following a broken link and receiving a 404 – File not found message. For a good developer it’s easy to ensure that a site is free from broken links. If you’re a Linux user you can use ht://check, if you prefer Windows you can use Xenu and Mac users can try BLT.

However, not all Web developers are as diligent (or competent) as you are. I’m sure you choose Cool URIs that never change and, in those very few circumstances where you do have to change a URI, you put in a proper server-side redirect. However, what about those other Web developers, the ones that link to you, how many of them check links after they’ve created them?

What do you do if another developer makes a mess of linking to you so that it causes a 404 Page Not Found error on your site?
Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

Web site testing is one of those things, like sticking to the speed limit on motorways, that everyone says they’ll do but, in reality, most don’t. Like speeding you have the potential to get somewhere more quickly but to do so you must take risks that can be very costly.

Almost without fail, testing will be the one area of a project that’s cut by a client if money or time get tight. In a lot of cases a developer will be told “We don’t need external testers, we’ll just get the guys in the office to give it the once over” or worse still “We’ll fix any problems after we launch”. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

(Why the customer isn’t always right)

Firstly, this article isn’t intended to be a rebuttal of Rob Swan’s excellent article on A List Apart (In Defense of Difficult Clients). It’s a really good piece and makes important points regarding the developer/customer relationship.

My intention with this post is to raise the, somewhat thorny, issue of what to do when a client wants something that’s against your techie morals. Consequently, I hope this posting is of interest to both developers and customers. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Over the last eight months I’ve been keeping an eye on the progress of a project that I used to work on which is now being run as a commercial operation. The site enjoyed very high ranking in Google and was in the top five results returned for most terms associated with its core activities.

To reflect the move from the fluffy academic world to the cut-throat business world the new owners wanted to swap from nameofproject.ac.uk to nameofproject.co.uk Continue Reading »

No Comments »