[00:00:09.060] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.460] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.760] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.710] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.950] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you for joining us.
[00:00:24.850] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:25.500] - Gordon
It's been a busy week. We've had, in the UK here, we've had the clocks go forward, so we lost an hour, which means that all sorts of things were all over the place. We had Easter. We had a day off on Sunday, didn't we?
[00:00:40.010] - Taylor
We did.
[00:00:40.570] - Gordon
Yeah, we had a nice day at Thorpe Park, which is a theme park in the UK here, and we spent it with a couple of friends, which was lovely. It was nice to have a day off. Anyway, let's get straight on to our topics. Shall I go first today?
[00:00:57.060] - Taylor
Sure.
[00:00:58.580] - Gordon
So big news this week, in fact, I think it was Wednesday, we had WordPress 6.5, which was released. And for those people who have auto-updating websites, it auto-updated to 6.5. Now, it's always good to update your software to make sure you've got the latest versions with the bug fixes, the new features, and also any new conflicts that have been found that have been fixed. So it's always good to have updates. However, when there's a big update like there is with WordPress, you need to be aware of when it drops and make sure that you don't have a really busy schedule because it can break things, can't it?
[00:01:53.470] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:54.270] - Gordon
And 6.5 broke two things for me. It broke, there was a conflict with a theme called 'Divi,' which is by Elegant Themes, and a plug-in for doing slideshows and galleries called 'Modular.' And if you had those two installed, so that's Divi and Modular and WordPress 6.5, then you ended up not being able to get into the WP Admin, and you need to be able to get into WP Admin to fix it. So that was a huge issue for me. I didn't know what the problem was when I started because all I saw was that you couldn't get into the Admin of a website. No idea why. In fact, on the first site that we came across, it was one of my customers' sites, and I was with my customer at the time, and we managed to revert back to two days ago's backup before the update happened so that we could see what the problem was. And that fixed the issue, but that's before the update, so we still didn't know quite what was going on. It took a little bit more research to figure out exactly what was wrong. And so I've got several sites that all use those plug-ins, and all of them locked me out. So what do you do?
[00:03:29.870] - Taylor
You restore from backup.
[00:03:31.190] - Gordon
Well, you do restore from backup if you don't know what the problem is. However, now I know what the problem is, I know how to fix it. On the WP repository for the plug-ins, there was a discussion about this, and people had found out what the problem was, and it turns out it was an issue with Modular, and there was a conflict with Divi, but Divi was fine. It was Modular that was wrong. And so they issued an update pretty quickly within a few hours. However, unless you've updated to that update, you still are going to get the problem. So what I had to do is go into FTP or just find the files and basically remove the directory that had Modular in it, replace it with the directory that had the new version in it, and that then allowed me to get back into the Admin. But it took a little while to do this, and I've got lots of sites that it needs doing on, so I need to fix all of them. I needed to fix all of them. And the other issue that I had was I have a bit of software that allows me to link all of my WordPress sites and my customers' WordPress sites to a control panel, and it lets me update and manage all of these sites in one place. And there was an issue with that as well. Basically, there is a client plug-in that needs to be on the customer's website, and the client plug-in was failing with my control panel. So you need to update the customer's client. But you can't do that because it doesn't see there's a new version, therefore you can't update it, and there's nowhere for you to be able to download the updated version from anywhere else. So it was a support ticket issue to the control panel people. They then sent me the plug-in, and now, oh my goodness, I had to do two things. I had to update the plug-in on every site that I manage; I had to disable it, reenable it, and relink that site to my control panel. And I've got over 40 websites that I haven't finished yet. I need to do this on. It's a huge task. However, I chose to do it now because 6.5 has dropped and it gives me an opportunity not only to go and do those updates, but also to check the site is working as it should be and reconnect it at the same time. So my customers know that it's working with the new version of WordPress. So it's quite good in some respects that it all came at one go because it means I can do it and not have to go back and then do the same work again for a different issue. But then again, it's a major pain when you have to go and update all your sites because there's been a bug or an issue that's not your fault. Do you ever get this sort of issue?
[00:06:48.060] - Taylor
Yeah, it happens quite a bit sometimes where, it's mainly when I write my own code that I end up crashing my sites because I'm trying to add some functionality and I've overwritten code, saved it and obviously that's crashed it. So I have to go in manually and edit the files, which is okay, but it can be annoying. But yeah, I don't have them very often where sites go down. Although, thankfully, all of my sites, for the most part, get cached statically using just straight HTML files and CSS and JS files, and so it doesn't actually hit the server. So I had a few sites that went down and crashed. However, because the sites on the front-end weren't being rendered with PHP and with WordPress, the sites themselves were rendering fine and were still visible and online, essentially to the public. However, if you tried to log into the back-end, it was obviously broken. That's quite a nice feature that because it's cached statically, if there is something that has gone wrong in the back-end, you don't notice it as much. If you're try and submit a form, for example, that will obviously not work but for the most part, the actual site content will still stay up.
[00:08:15.880] - Gordon
So my takeaway from this is, there are several of. So the first is, when there's a big update to any software that your company, your website, whatever it is relies on is coming out, make sure you put time aside to test it properly, to make sure that it is doing what it should do. The worst thing ever is to have an update, update your site, not check it, come back to it maybe a month later and find that it's been down for a month. I mean, that's a huge fail. You do not want that. The second thing I took away from this is I have a service that monitors URLs for me and will tell me if there's an issue. And that's all well and good. But as you were saying, the website was still up, the back-end was down. So I am going to not only add a link to the front homepage of a website to monitor that, I'm also going to monitor the admin login page, because if that's not accessible, then I need to know as soon as possible, because it might be that it's been hacked. It might be that there's been an update that's messed something up. So I need to know about that. So I'm now going to be checking two URLs, not just one. So that's a big takeaway for me. And the other thing is, yes, I know what you're going to say in the comments. You're going to all say, "you should have tested these sites, these updates before the update actually was released." And you can do that because there are betas available, but many, many things change, even at the last minute. So with my gallery software, they updated it a few hours after the big update dropped. And so no matter what my testing, I would have found that it didn't work and I wouldn't have known that there was an update to Modular had I not gone looking. And so therefore I wouldn't have known about it until after the event. And so as it happens on this occasion, it's better that I looked for it afterwards when other people had found the issue and fixed it because it would have saved me a lot of time. Because if I had done it on a staging site and tested these updates, a) it's not something I offer to my customers. I don't offer that. I could do it for my own sites, and I should do it for my own sites. But I could have spent an awful long time trying to trace where the issue is, only to find it's outside of my control. So by doing it the way I have done it, I am fixing it after the fact. As far as the visitors are concerned, they didn't see anything that was wrong because it was the back-end that was the issue on this occasion. So it worked out fine in the end. Well, it will do once I finish the other job of getting the managing side all fixed as well. But that's the takeaway. You leave time to check these sites, and check your forms as well. I think we've mentioned this many times, but if you've got a contact form on your website or you've got an order form on your website, check them regularly. Because again, if it stops working for whatever reason, you do not want to be in a situation where it happened a few months ago and you haven't had any enquiries or sales and you're thinking, "It's really quiet. Why is it so quiet?" Just check them regularly. Make sure that they are working. Right, that's me done. What's your topic today?
[00:12:05.540] - Taylor
So my topic is... I can't remember what my topic was.
[00:12:10.730] - Gordon
You were going to talk about resilience. No, that's not right. What are you going to talk about? I don't know. It's not my topic.
[00:12:21.580] - Taylor
So it's along the lines of being self-critical of your work. I'm quite self-critical of my own work, like quite a lot of people are. I think the people that are most self-critical are those that have the highest standards, those that look at the details and check them, especially in our industry.
[00:12:53.180] - Gordon
Obsess over them.
[00:12:53.820] - Taylor
Yeah. So especially in our industry, it's very easy to tell the difference between a good designer and a good developer, compared to one that is an okay designer, an okay developer, and also a bad designer and a bad developer, because you'll see that the fine details are missing. So things that would take... If you're taking a normal page, the bulk of the page is not going to take the longest part. The longest part is going to be making all the small adjustments and tweaks because of responsiveness, because of the fine details that take the longest. So things like making sure the spacing across the entire page on desktop, on tablet, on mobile is good. You haven't got weird spacings between random sections. But then also making sure that that consistency is throughout the website. And it's something that takes the longest part, but also is very easily overlooked. I think I look at some designs I have done, websites I've created, and I think, "I don't like it. I don't think it looks professional. I don't think it's to the standard that I try to hold myself to."
[00:14:22.830] - Gordon
But that's because your standards have changed, right?
[00:14:25.870] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:14:26.540] - Gordon
So as you've progressed in your knowledge and your experience, the standard to which you hold yourself has been raised.
[00:14:34.420] - Taylor
But even sites that I've been working on in the past couple of weeks, I look at and go, "I don't think this is my best work." But when I talk to my friends and other people in the industry, I've had people say, "I would be proud to put that on my portfolio." And it's interesting because what I see as, not a fail, but not my best work, others look at and go, "actually, you've done a really good job. You can see you spent the time to go into the fine details," like I was talking about. And it made me think about how we can always be very over-analytical and very judgmental of our own work because the bar that we hold ourselves to is always increasing and is always getting higher. But sometimes it's good to look back on the sites you were creating, but also comparing yourself to the industry. I know we always say, "Don't compare yourself to others because everyone's in a different position." But you want to compare yourself to the industry standard to see where do you position yourself. Are you one of the top in your game? Are you very much lacking in that. I think it comes in magic as well. You have a lot of people who are very well known and you look up to them because they are a great performer, for example. They have been recognised by lots of people, and they will still have that imposter syndrome, that level of standard that they will always think and go, "It's not my greatest work," but even their worst minimum standard that they are willing to submit and have in the public is far greater than probably 50, 60, 70% of the actual industry. And so even though your level of quality may be slightly less for whatever reason, it could be time, it could be budget, sometimes it's good to look at and go, "actually, even though it's not my greatest work, it's still far greater than other aspects of the industry," or your own work if you're comparing it to that. So yeah, just something to think about and don't be so harsh on yourself, I think.
[00:17:11.840] - Gordon
I think that is the problem when you are a perfectionist. I've had this issue before. I've looked at things and I've spent way too long on things. And you have to step back, I think, and look at it and go, "Is it good enough?" And "is it going to make the customer happy? Are they going to be pleased with it?" Because at the end of the day, that's the important thing. Is the customer going to be happy or are they the ones that are going to be picky? So you'll know the customers who'll be picky because they'll say, "Can you move that picture a centimetre to the left." As soon as you find out that's the sort of customer, you can quote accordingly because you know there's going to be an awful lot more work involved in dealing with this customer. So I think, "Is it good enough?" Is something we need to look at ourselves, decide for ourselves if that is something that is relevant in this situation?
[00:18:09.570] - Taylor
Yeah, and it was interesting because I've had a couple of experiences where I've submitted work to a client, like a design for approval. I don't know, there was always something that seemed off and I wasn't sure why it looked off. I think if I had more time, I could make it even better. And so I'm not 100% proud of it. And I think that I'm being very analytical in it. And then the client comes back and goes, "oh, my God, it's absolutely amazing. We love it." And it's like, "okay, well, maybe I was just being, you know overthinking."
[00:18:50.110] - Gordon
Over critical. Yeah.
[00:18:51.200] - Taylor
And I've had it happen in the past where because whenever I submit designs and things like that, for the most part I've already done all of the analysis, all of the deductions of, "is this the best decision?" And 95% of the time when I submit stuff, I've gone through that process at least three, four times. So when clients come back and give suggestions to change it, because of the way that I work, I think and things like that, I feel a bit of pushback towards me. It's not them personally, it's just they have opinions and thoughts on how they would like the design to be. At the end of the day, that's their decision and it's fine. And when I come back to it in a week's time, I go, "Actually, that was a good idea, and I'm glad that they asked for it." There was a client that was asking for more colour, and I thought, "You can't just throw colour at the website and just hope for the best. It's just going to look crazy." But I managed to add colour in a way that worked with the website, gave it meaning, gave the colours meaning rather than just splashing colour here there and everywhere, which you can very easily tell on a website if someone has thought about the colours or if they've just picked a random colour and they're all different shades and things. Now that I look back at it, it actually, I think, makes the site a lot better because it makes it more fun, it makes it more colourful, it makes it more inviting than being just a professional, corporate-y, no character to the site.
[00:20:41.390] - Gordon
Yeah, very good. Anything else you want to say?
[00:20:44.170] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:20:45.150] - Gordon
Okay, so sometimes "is it good enough?" is the right decision. Other times you do need to obsess over the detail, but not all the time. It's down to you to decide and make that decision. Thank you for joining us. That's the end of this episode.
[00:21:05.300] - Taylor
It is.
[00:21:06.260] - Gordon
I have to say, I feel really lucky that we get to do this. For those who don't already know, we do this because we want to keep a record of what we've been doing and something we can look back on and search for and see what decisions we made and how we made them at the time. And so thank you for joining us on that journey. And if you get anything out of these, then please let us know. You can like, share and subscribe. Leave a comment. We're on Facebook and on YouTube.
[00:21:40.270] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes, search for things and find anything we may have spoken about in the past.
[00:21:50.140] - Gordon
And if you just want to listen to this instead of watching it, then we're on all the major podcast platforms. Just search for This Week With Taylor and Gordon. We'll be back with you next week at 1pm on Friday. Until then, my name's Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:22:07.350] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:22:09.970] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:22:10.540] - Taylor
Bye.
