Episode Transcript
Monica Pitts 0:00
So welcome back to marketing with purpose. My name is Monica Pitts and today we are going to talk about mistakes in web design. And my chief wear of many hats, Stacy and I are going to share with you 11 surefire ways to break your site. Because people make a lot of mistakes in web design, and some are tiny. Some are just the way that it looks. And then others literally blow up your entire website. And we have fought a lot of web fires over the past 18 years from accidentally deleting your admin user to an expired domain name that got captured by pirates. And some of these examples that we're going to tell you today we learned the hard way, and then others we just had to fix. Because sometimes your secret to success is just knowing what you don't know. And so that's what this episode is all about sharing with you the things that you might not know that will absolutely break your site. So Stacy and I are going to reminisce about some of the simple and creative ways that we've seen people completely nuke their websites so that way you can learn from their mistakes. And you can keep your website not just running but thriving. So let's get to business. You're on a mission and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. So Stacy and I have been creating websites together for like, what feels like 100 years. Stacey, how long have we been doing this nonsense?
Stacy Brockmeier 2:00
I think 13 years.
Monica Pitts 2:02
Oh my gosh, 13
Stacy Brockmeier 2:05
so many years.
Monica Pitts 2:07
That was That's how old Ellis is going to be in just a few days. Ellis is my oldest child. We have been together through my entire motherhood.
Stacy Brockmeier 2:15
Yeah. Yep. I think you interviewed me like literally days after you had Ellis.
Monica Pitts 2:21
Wow. I must have been crazy. She's like, No comment.
Stacy Brockmeier 2:31
I don't remember it. And it was just an interview. So it wasn't like I was judging you. But I mean, you definitely could have been I guess.
Monica Pitts 2:40
So tell everybody sees you what's your roll over at may create in these past 13 years? What have you been up to?
Stacy Brockmeier 2:47
Oh, it might be easier to say what's not my role. But I wear a lot of hats. Mostly I help clients plan their websites, and I manage our finances.
Monica Pitts 3:00
And over the years, you've also been a project manager and had to guide them through every step and every decision along the way. Yeah, yeah. And you consult with about how they're going to build it.
Stacy Brockmeier 3:12
I do a lot of like managing our processes and coming up with new processes to make us more efficient. Yes,
Monica Pitts 3:18
you do. You're very good at that. And she's a whiz with a spreadsheet, and nothing that girl can't do with a spreadsheet.
Stacy Brockmeier 3:27
I often get memes from my co workers about being a wizard and a spreadsheet, you can only imagine what they those are. Now
Monica Pitts 3:34
the interesting thing about being a project manager for websites is that while you are not the person building the site, you do have to be the first line of defense for tech support and planning and kind of guiding people through this process. So while Stacey doesn't physically build sites, she knows how to fix them. And that's really interesting, because she literally knows how to fix them, even though she doesn't physically fix them herself. That yeah,
Stacy Brockmeier 4:05
I've learned a lot. I never knew how websites were built 13 years ago, and look at where we are today. So
Monica Pitts 4:11
we have a list of 11 things that we have either done ourselves or encountered and had to fix over the last, well, 13 years together. And we're gonna go through them with you. So that way you can learn from the mistakes of others and not make these mistakes yourself because sometimes you're just not thinking and you check a box and poof, everything is not where you thought it was going to be. And then Stacey actually has a bonus at the end, which is a surefire way to break your email. So she's going to explain to you how to not break your email when you take your site live. So stick around for that at the end. All right, so Stacey, why don't you kick us off because we have had a number of people who've done this first thing here.
Stacy Brockmeier 4:55
These are serial organizers, so people who like to go into their site And clean things up and delete admin users without assigning the content that those users created to another user. If you do this, it like literally delete your entire site. Well,
Monica Pitts 5:14
it deletes everything that that user made. So like we've had clients that have deleted them may create user, which that's always fun, because then we can't get back into the site unless they make us a new user. But we created all their pages. And everything, we can't fix it for them. And it's, they're all gone, because they've been deleted, if they weren't assigned to another user. Now, we're not saying though, that you shouldn't go in and clean up your users, you should do that. And anytime that you have an employee, leave your company, you should definitely go in and like remove them from your site. So that way, they can't log in and break things. You just have to attribute their content to another user, if you want people to be able to see it on the front of your website.
Stacy Brockmeier 5:56
Yeah, this is not one of those times where it's like I have read the terms and conditions. This is a time that you should read the checkboxes and make sure that you do what they say yes. I feel like that's the biggest lie I've ever told is the reading Terms and Conditions. Yes, I did read them. Like no, I didn't said no one.
Monica Pitts 6:16
Okay, so number two, is failing to check compatibility before updating. Okay, so what happens with your website is the way that it's extended usually is through plugins. And those plugins, they are not always updated as quickly as the core software of your website would be updated. So this is, especially as a specific WordPress example. So if you update the core of your website software before the plugin is ready, sometimes it can't handle that. And it will like blow up that part of the site, or all of your site. And that is really crappy. And then there's a second piece of that, which is like, how would you put it back together after you have accidentally updated something that wasn't ready for an update. And Stacey, tell us about what you should do before you update stuff.
Stacy Brockmeier 7:13
You should always, always, always, always, always, always take a backup. You should actually be taking backups very regularly. Otherwise, when things break, you can't roll it back. If you don't have those backups. It's super sad when we have somebody who comes to us and they're like, I did this thing. And we're like, you're not on our hosting. And we don't take backups of your site. So we can't help you. And I don't like to tell people that I can't help them. No, I really like I'm a yes person for sure. Yeah. I like to say yes. And it's really disheartening when I tell them, I can't help them, because there's no back.
Monica Pitts 7:49
Oh, and they're distressed. And you want people to not be distressed than that. Yeah, for sure. So there's two places that you can take backups, you can take backups directly in your hosting provider. But you can also install a plugin in your WordPress site and take a backup and download it to your computer. So if you're not sure about dinking, around in your hosting space, then go ahead and install a plugin and get those backups for you start updating stuff, so that way you don't break stuff. But here's that here's like, just like we just said that you should be removing your users, you should be updating your plugins and software. And if you're not, then you're opening the door for hackers to hack your site. Okay, we did a whole episode about it. And so if you want to go back and learn like the number one way to keep your site safe from hackers, we explain all of this in that episode. But yeah, so you should be doing updates, but you need to do backups to Stacey, what is number three, we just had a client do this the other day.
Stacy Brockmeier 8:49
It's so unfortunate when people delete their homepage, but fortunately in WordPress, there is a trash can just like on your computer that we can go back and reinstate your homepage. But also, this isn't just deleting your homepage, it's sometimes people will reassign their homepage or their blog and not have it set up quite correctly. And it's kind of a bummer because it goes down period. It'll go down for a period of time until we can get in and fix it.
Monica Pitts 9:18
Yeah, so just so you know, if you do want to change the page that your homepage is if you want a different page that people land on when they just type in your your URL, you change it under Settings, and then reading so it's under the settings and then reading in WordPress. So go there and then you just reassign your homepage to another page and you can do the same thing with your blog. But if but if you just delete it and you don't reassign it, then your website doesn't know what one you want it to be. And so stuff does not work right. Often
Stacy Brockmeier 9:55
it'll result in just a blank white screen when you come to your site with Just disconcerting
Monica Pitts 10:00
for you. And for the people who are trying to use your website. They're like, what is this? This does not make me trust this company. No. So number four was a fun one. We had a client do this. They let their domain name expire, and they were a salon and then a pornography site bought it, and redirected it over to their pornography website. It was not awesome. And so for how many years was it Stacy? Like, at least a year if not, like three?
Stacy Brockmeier 10:37
Their own say, I think it was two or three, their old domain name went to a porn site. Yeah, is
Monica Pitts 10:42
bad. It's real bad. And eventually, the porn website, let the domain expire. And they did get it back. But that was a really weird three years for that company. Okay, friends. Now, Stacy, they like the domain registrar's, they let you know that stuff's going to expire.
Stacy Brockmeier 11:03
They send you like a million emails, or so many emails telling you that it's going to expire. And then you also have a grace period after it expires. To let to go back and get it back. So
Monica Pitts 11:18
so no worries, your friends, no worries, you can go get it back. But you need to make sure that you don't let it all the way expire. It's is a bad plan. Yeah,
Stacy Brockmeier 11:28
don't go past that grace period, it's super painful, because you can't get it back if someone else buys it up. Now,
Monica Pitts 11:37
number five is a tricky one. Because some people are updating without checking compatibility or without taking backups. And then other people never update anything. And if you don't update anything, obviously, we already said Your website is susceptible to hacking, but then also, browsers change like all the time, they're continually releasing updates, you know this because your browser asks you to update it all the time. And eventually, your browsers will not render your website correctly. And then things will be broken. And so you have to update things. Because if you never update anything, eventually things will break and you won't know it because you're just not out looking at your website and trying stuff out. Alright, so take us on to number six Stasi.
Stacy Brockmeier 12:26
Terrible hosting, choosing poor hosting can be the detriment of a website. So first of all, it can load really slow or be really hard to get an update. We've had so many terrible experiences with hosting providers that we did not choose that our clients chose. There's one great big one in particular, that I do not like to host with GoDaddy, their hosting is so hard, it's hard to maintain, it's hard to get in and do things, it's hard to get a hold of somebody when things are down. So that's like the biggest evil thing, right is that when their hosting goes down, they literally just tell you, it's down. We don't know when it's going to be up. And also, by the way, we're not going to tell you when it is back up.
Monica Pitts 13:22
And they won't even tell you when it's down, you'll just notice that your website isn't there. And but okay, so having said that, though, that's like in the lowest level of GoDaddy hosting, you need it. In the not so distant future, we will be talking about different types of hosting on the podcast. So stay tuned for that episode. But if you're using the cheapest possible hosting provider you can get, then it's not it's not a great decision. If you want your website to be up all the time and usable by everybody and people that have a good user experience. You get what you pay for. And the cheapest fighter back
Stacy Brockmeier 14:02
in the day when like there was always there was like Penny hosting. Oh, god, there's like a penny a month and it's like you cannot a mat you cannot get good service for a penny a month. Even if that's just like your first year rate. You're not gonna get service for that. Nobody could even answer the phone for 12 cents. Yeah,
Monica Pitts 14:21
like the hosting company that we use, answers the phone like they have. They talk to us all the time. And if we're going to host hundreds of websites, we can't very well put them in a system where no one responds to you. Because then if something bad happens, we can't go in and remedy it quickly. Yeah, and Okay, so last thing about GoDaddy before we you think that they're terrible. Once again, pick the right pick the right package because they have great packages. It's just if you buy the cheapest one it's not. And also we buy almost all of our domain names through GoDaddy and they are a great Registrar for domain names. They do a great job. So gonna give them a play. They're by
Stacy Brockmeier 15:02
far the best domain registrar, in my opinion. Just when you choose bottom of the barrel hosting, it's painful. Yeah.
Monica Pitts 15:15
Okay, so number seven, I had a client actually do this the other day, once again, that quintessential organizer. They were real origami. Yeah, they went in. And they saw all these files and their hosting space. And this is why we don't most of the time just, we don't even give our clients direct access to their hosting space. It's not that we don't love them, and that it's not theirs, and that they couldn't have access that they wanted it. We just don't want them to go in and do things like this. They saw the files, they thought they seemed messy, and they just moved them. They just moved them into folders that they thought made more sense. And okay, friends, your website is coded to look for things in specific places. And when you move it, it's like moving the toothpaste in your bathroom. You can't ever find it. The challenge is the server doesn't know to also look in the medicine cabinet. Right? It doesn't know. And so it's just like, No toothpaste, and so it just doesn't display stuff, and it broke their whole site. That was lame. Okay, Stacy, one of the things that we do when we take sites live is part of number eight. Tell us about that. Yep.
Stacy Brockmeier 16:24
So when we build websites, we often build them at a like fake domain name with like a bunch of numbers and letters. So that way, you can see your like, really, truly working website before it goes live. So that fake domain name has to be replaced with your real domainname when it's time. And if you don't do that correctly, if you don't put the period in the right spot or you spell something wrong, it can be really hard to fix that. So we use a plugin called Better Find and Replace. It's super robust. And so basically what it does, it goes through all of your website files in your database, and it changes the URL from that fake URL to your real URL. And unfortunately, if you do it wrong, it can make it so that we can't get into your site anymore. So it's really unfortunate that way.
Monica Pitts 17:23
But they have a tester. We better tester. Yeah. Better find your dry run. Yeah, they have a tester. So then you can use the dry run feature to see what would happen like what would change. And if it's really yucky, then yeah, don't do it. And then after you run better Find and Replace, delete that, that sucker delete it. Because hackers love this one way you can get in and drink every day.
Stacy Brockmeier 17:48
You do not need to keep that plug in.
Monica Pitts 17:51
No, get rid of it. So okay, so another thing that we do when we take sides live, or whenever you're going to delete a page from your website is you redirect it to another page, because you want all the traffic from that page to go to the new page, right? If you incorrectly redirect your pages, then it will break things. It can even break things like you have the link in an email, and it's redirected. But the email puts UTM parameters at the end of your links so that your Google Analytics can tell where the traffic is coming from. But your if your redirection isn't set up correctly, then it would never show up at that page, because it would just show up at a 4044 error page. So that would break stuff. But it can also break things in an even bigger way. Because none of the pages can show up. If the redirection is really bad.
Stacy Brockmeier 18:41
Yeah, okay, redirects are super important. Google really thinks that they're important, we think they're important to get your old links to your new links. Just want to make sure you set them up correctly. And if
Monica Pitts 18:52
you have broken it, actually, I should take a step back. If you don't know, if you have broken redirects, the easiest way to look is at a 404 error report. And you can get a free one of those. If you sign your website up for Google Search Console, you can get a free 404 Error Report. And yeah, it'll tell you all the pages that are not redirecting properly and some of them you care about, and some of you don't. Yeah. Okay. So number 10. This is something that we talk about in our office all the time because this is something that can make or break our budget. Honestly. Tell us about it CC,
Stacy Brockmeier 19:32
not checking your website updates. So if you go in, there's lots of ways to check it. The first is a preview, there's a preview in WordPress that you can check your edits. You can also and should also check them after you actually hit the publish button or the Update button. And you should do it often. So back in the day, so we don't use like Word documents and stuff. anymore but back in the day word, but documents didn't auto save. And so we always said, you know, like, save often save early saved often. Yeah, yeah. So you really want to like, take that approach with your website, because if you make a ton a ton of edits, and then you go out to your site, and something is really broken, you have to revert it back. And then you have to make all those edits again. So make sure you save early and save often and double check your edits as you go, rather than making tons and tons and tons of changes, and then going out and looking at it.
Monica Pitts 20:35
Because even the best WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get editor, like your admin section is not going to look exactly the same as your live site. It just doesn't, they don't look exactly the same. And that's okay. But you have to recognize that and, and check early and check often because then you'll know when you break it. And then you can just delete that one thing.
Stacy Brockmeier 20:56
Make sure you click every link, and you check your email forms and test those to make sure that you're getting your notifications, check all the things yes,
Monica Pitts 21:05
and test your email forms after you take your site live to. And before you take your site life like you got to test them both times because they might work before you take your site live. And then they might not work after you take it live. So there's nothing worse than having people trying to contact you to do business with you. And you don't get their information like you literally never see it in your inbox. Like I don't know,
Stacy Brockmeier 21:28
I think there might be one thing that's worse. Oh, and that is not letting people even find your website. It's number 11. So that's the next one. So we had I'm gonna like tell a story on ourselves. Yeah. Because a long, long time ago, WordPress and in like, installed, I don't know, that's not the right word. Press added a feature that allows us to develop websites and not have them being indexed by Google until we're ready.
Monica Pitts 22:05
Which means that ignores the site until we tell it to look at it. And like we
Stacy Brockmeier 22:11
may not have known about it for a while, a little while, you may not have known about this new wonderful feature that they put on their platform by default. And I mean, keep in mind, this is like literally like 12 years ago, this is not who we are these days, we've grown so many times. But Monica and I like to learn things the hard way. And so we weren't unchecking, the box telling Google that they could see sites for like, a couple of months, it wasn't forever, it wasn't a big, like long period of time. But if you don't uncheck the box, in its in general settings in reading, so it's just like where you reset your homepage and that stuff that we were talking about earlier. But it literally says like, discourage search engines from indexing this site. I think that's something like that. Yes, in there. So make sure that that box is on checked. It's a big to do. Yes.
Monica Pitts 23:08
And, and. And here's the deal, though, if you do forget to uncheck it, like we did, because we didn't know about it. We were monitoring those sites in Google Analytics. And so we saw when, like, when, after a few months, I was like, Wait a second, no one's coming to this site. And then I started to panic. And I was like, What did I do wrong? And eventually, we found this was the answer. So if you're looking at your data, you'll know right away that you that you did it,
Stacy Brockmeier 23:39
or like be able to find you anymore,
Monica Pitts 23:41
because after a few weeks or months, if even if you just google your company name, like your Facebook page is gonna show up at the top and your LinkedIn page and that kind of stuff. But, but your website won't show up. And it's because you forgot to uncheck this box. Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:58
that's great. Yeah. Okay. So make sure that box checking is correct.
Monica Pitts 24:03
Now, our bonus on to number 12. So tell us how to not break our email when you take a site live. How do you do that, Stacy?
Stacy Brockmeier 24:14
So you're dope, I'm gonna like take a step back and explain domain names for just a second. So domain names have different parts. So think about your domain is like a roundabout. And then you have all these streets that go off of your roundabout and one of those goes to your website and one goes to your email and then you have other streets that could potentially go to other places. We're not going to dive into those other streets. But if you don't set the map appropriately to let people get off on the right street for your email, it's called an MX record. So if you don't have the MX record set up appropriately, you will stop getting email when your website goes live. And what's scary is you might not stop Getting all of your email for like 48 hours because it takes that long to propagate across the internet. So you might not actually know that there's something wrong. But those emails that were sent in that 48 hour period that did not get to you, like, there's no way to find them, there is no way to find out who emailed you or whatever. And it's a really bad way to let your clients down. So make sure whoever's taking your site live knows exactly how your email is set up. They don't break your MX records. They don't put in forwards when you have email with that domain name. So a lot of times you'll have multiple domain names. You have to set those up extra special if you have email at one domain name, and it's not your main website, domain. Make sure whoever's taking it live, because it's probably not you knows what the heck they're doing. Yeah,
Monica Pitts 25:53
there you go. And if it is, you just do some homework before you do it. And now you know, look at that MX record, and do your homework. So you do it right.
Stacy Brockmeier 26:04
And you might talk to the people who are providing your email. Yeah,
Monica Pitts 26:08
have them involved in the conversation that usually, that usually fixes stuff real fast.
Unknown Speaker 26:14
For sure, don't
Stacy Brockmeier 26:15
be afraid to ask for help. Okay,
Monica Pitts 26:18
friends. So I'm gonna roll through these like really, really fast to wrap us up here. Don't delete your admin user without assigning or attributing their content to another user. Always check for compatibility before updating and always take backups before you update. Don't delete your homepage. And if you do, delete your homepage, reassign it to another place. Don't let your domain name expire, don't let that happen to you. update things. Choose a hosting space that's actually going to provide you hosting all the time and not just whenever it happens to provide hosting. Don't move around the files in your hosting space, just leave them alone, they were set up that way for a reason. And when you run a find and replace, make sure that you do a dry run first. Make sure you do your homework and correctly redirect your pages test test, test those redirections always check your edits, check every link, test all your email forms, and uncheck the Do Not index box. And then as our bonus Stacy reminded us that when we take our website live, we have to be very diligent in knowing how our email is set up. So that way we direct our MX record in our domain properly. So do that homework. Okay, Stacy, anything else you want to add before we wrap this up? I don't think so. All right, friends. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Hopefully now you can learn from these lovely web buyers that we bought over the past 18 years. And keep these things from happening to you. And avoid all of these mistakes in web design. So thank you so much for listening. And as I mentioned earlier, we do have an episode coming out all about domains. Yes. All about domain names. All about hosting what type of hosting so stick with us. And we'll we'll be releasing those soon. Subscribe to the podcast and then you will get a notification when they come out. Yes. Okay. So thank you so much. And until next time, go forth and mark it with purpose.
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