Luke Rohm
Forms on websites have been a pain point for us recently.
While we haven’t posted a set of values or beliefs or whatever the catchy trend is today, we still have them. Maybe we should? I don’t know. Feels a little disingenuous.
Unpopular take. Most companies say they have values. Hand out cards with them printed on it. Put up posters. Ask the people? Almost all will tell you they don’t resonate or even reach the level that matters. Those people who actually talk to your customers.
We’re not about that life. We walk the talk before there’s even a need to write it down. If you can’t pick up on how we choose to run our company or build our team we’ve already failed.
My point is that actual transparency. Webster’s dictionary style. Is important to us. I know that’s what everyone says, but here’s a bit for those that don’t know (now you know).
We’ve had a few missteps recently with Forms (Formas). I’m going to share what we did wrong and how we’re trying to get better.
Never Take Easy for Granted.
First of the misfortuned. We moved one of our clients to using Ninja Forms for their applications. While we always test migrations to new tech we missed something here. Luckily the applications still defaulted to our admin email. We missed something in our settings to get it to our client. No Bueno. Something easy our controls easily should have caught, but we missed it.
Even when it shouldn’t (by our knowledge) affect anything we still check. Nothing is for free.
Fixes Might Make Things Worse.
This one hurt my soul. We’ve been battling a notification problem on an e-commerce site that makes zero sense. I added a SMTP service in hopes that they were going to “Junk” mail. Turns out this fix broke the traditional contact form on the site and I had no idea. I didn’t even think to check. So my attempt, that didn’t even fix the problem mind you, made things worse. Cool. Way to go Luke…
What should we do? Check everything. Stop moving so fast that “fixes” turn into failures.
Conundrum.
This last one is something I’m still working on. Building an HR portal for a website. Debating down a long list of possibilities and understanding of requirements. We always look to plugins first for these solutions. Why? Wouldn’t you rather have someone else maintain and update the solution?
Always downfalls from plugins, but for the most part it works out.
So I’m still working on the solution. What should I do differently this time? How do I get better?
Test everything before you push it live. Then do it again. You know this.
Is done better than perfect? Yes. Is fast better than fucked up? No.
Figure it out Rohm.
Conclusion.
I’m more than comfortable putting my insecurities out there. More honestly, my failures that shouldn’t have ever happened.
Why? We don’t pretend to know everything. We do pursue excellence in everything.
Do we mess up? Yes.
Will we do it again? Yes.
Will we confess to it and do better next time? Bet your company on it. We do.
