Archive for January, 2011

There is nothing more embarrassing than having something broken on your website. What’s worse? When you’re a web developer and you have something broken on your website. Yes, unfortunately, it happens to everyone.

Note: This post might be a tad on the technical side for some of my regular readers. If you don’t feel comfortable troubleshooting an error on your website, contact me to have a look for you.

So what do you do when you find something isn’t working? (After swearing and/or crying.) Not every problem is going to work out the same, but there are some practical steps you can take to hunt down the source of the problem.

1. Determine what’s happening (or not, as the case may be). Make a note of everything that is happening, what should be happening, and where is stops working.
2. If you’re comfortable, take the offending code out of your website. Especially if you can’t fix it right away, take out what isn’t working so your users aren’t discouraged or deterred by it.
3. Again, go with your comfort level – Create a new page for testing purposes. Copy and paste the original code from the page that’s not working into a test file. You can use this to troubleshoot what’s happening and not have a negative effect on the rest of your site.
4. This is where it really starts to depend on the problem you’re having. Look over your code and make sure there’s nothing obvious wrong. Misspellings are the #1 culprit of errors. If it was working previously (and you’re sure it was working) then you can be brief here. Just double check. There’s almost nothing worse than spending an hour or more troubleshooting something only to discover it was a typo.
5. If the element that’s not working has multiple pieces, try commenting them out, one at a time, to see what changes. For example, if you are using a tool like FancyBox (like I am elsewhere on this site), try commenting out the optional script calls. If you are using any plugins or widgets (in WordPress, for example), try disabling them one at a time to determine which, if any, is causing the problem.
6. Check to see if there’s a new version of your app/tool/plugin/widget. If there is a new version, the author may have fixed the problem you’re experiencing. Note: This can also be the cause of some failures! If you’ve recently updated the item that is broken, try to revert to a previous version. If reverting works, you might need to check with the author about what changed in the new version and why it no longer works for you.
7. Use Google. Check the Help site. One of the best troubleshooting tools is Google. Perform a search using terms related to the problem you’re experiencing and see if any of the results sound right. At the very least, you should be pointed in the right direct. If your problem is coming from an app/tool/plugin/widget, look for the author’s website. Usually they have a Help or FAQ section with detailed information to help you troubleshoot.

There are many more problem-specific options to try. If you’ve tried all of these steps (or you don’t feel comfortable doing them) and you’re still stuck, then give your web person (hopefully me!) an e-mail or call. Include everything you noted from step #1 and how you’ve tried to fix it.