Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Up... but down...
I was all set last night for the big upload of my redesigned site with a lot more content. I had even planned to get all philosophical in my blog and examine how easy it is to put off completing a project because a project that never gets completed never has a chance to fail—it retains its potential of magnificent success without ever having to prove itself one way or another.

But then it happened. I uploaded and I found the formatting had blown all to pieces. I mean, that site was UGLY. I worked on it until midnight before calling it a night and then went back to it today.

It's fixed now, but the celebratory mood I was preparing to enjoy last night just isn't there anymore. It was a painstaking process of testing my stylesheet line by line until it finally worked. Why it didn't work is beyond me. Every test I did of it showed it should have validated perfectly.

But I finally accepted that I'd have to settle for a little flabbier code than I would prefer in order to get the job done. Flabby and working is better than elegant and not working.

It's probably better on two counts, though, that my upload turned from celebration to fizzle. First of all, if the site was going to be rendered poorly by some browsers, it's better that it render poorly in my browser so I could see it and make adjustments rather than go on blissfully patting myself on the back while everyone else was seeing it as a total mess.

Secondly, it's probably better that I not get too caught up in the "completion" of my project because it's far from finished. I mean, I put up the minimum that I felt I could put up and still have it feel like a complete site. That's something to celebrate? There's a whole lot of work to do yet.

So maybe that's my philosophical subject to ramble about tonight instead: the fact that our work as small business owners on the web is never something we can afford to consider finished.

Every milestone we reach is only a stepping stone to the next one.
Jeff