On the Floor

It started life as a straight-forward, static web site with a reasonably simple design:  #wrapper, #header, #content, #footer, done.  Then, the client wanted a sidebar.  The designer wanted a custom font.  You wanted to make it work in IE6.

Small changes happened.  The client wanted a blog, so you installed WordPress.  The side bar got bloated with links, so you turned it into a multi-level menu.  The client wanted a new space in the header to run banner ads.  The designer wanted rounded corners on the footer.

Big changes happened.  The client wanted to add a forum and a photo gallery.  The designer wanted a semi-transparent background.  You still wanted to make it work in IE6.

And then one day, you had an awakening.  Maybe you were tracking down a missing semi-colon in a php file, or scrolling through obsolete css classes to find out why that damn link was the wrong colour, or trying to debug some javascript you lifted from a web site somewhere, but you realized that this project was no longer a tightly coded, fast-loading, straight-forward web site and was, in fact, a steaming pile of shit.

What happened next was up to you.  Maybe you thought, "All my web sites suck."  Maybe you said, "This client is a jerk, anyway," and then fixed the bug and went home.  Maybe you thought, "Not my problem," and then left it for someone else to fix.  Maybe you got a phone call and forgot all about it. 

Maybe you said, "This site should be re-done from scratch," and then decided it was too much work.  Or you were afraid that you would break it.  Or you were afraid that the client wouldn't pay for it.  Maybe you started to fix it, but got distracted by something else.

Or maybe you got all the people involved in the project together, and talked about the problem, and decided to deal with it.  You made a plan, you had some late nights, you fought with your wife, you went over-budget and the client refused to pay the difference - but twelve months later, there was a brand new web site sitting where your dog's breakfast of spaghetti code had been a year earlier.  And, to top it all off, it still worked in IE6.