Internet Explorer, the Web Developer’s Nemesis
Well, it’s mine anyway.
I got a big wake up call yesterday morning. I had placed two auctions up on Flippa a couple days back. They are the two that I’m having a helluva hard time selling. Why? I haven’t figured it out yet. Like I said before, I think it’s because of some missing components such as not having necessary software (mostly for backend link building and SEO), the knowledge of knowing how to drive traffic to sites, as well as the reputation needed to soothe the minds of potential buyers.
Anyway, I received an email from a potential buyer who was looking at one of the sites I had up for sale. He told me that he would like for me to fix the header/navigational area so that he could have a better look at the site. I was dumbfounded. I looked at the site in my trusty (or at least I thought) Firefox browser. Nothing seemed out of order. I checked it out on my hubby’s computer to see if it would look differently since I seem to have a problem with clearing the cache on mine. Again – nothing seemed out of place.
So I took a screenshot and placed it on the auction. I also answered the guy’s email and asked if he would kindly send me a screenshot of what he sees on the computer. A few hours later, I received a response.
I gawked and cringed at the screenshot that the person sent me. The site was broken. The navigation was not there except for a near invisible list of links to pages. The background to the articles were not white like it should be. And the footer at the bottom did not exist. I was so embarassed.
Web design 101: Always check to make sure your site is working across all browsers, not just your favorite one. For those of you who would like to avoid my mistake, always check your site at this site Browser Shots for compatibility.
I wasn’t sure what made the site look horrible in IE. Of course, many web developers know that IE handles websites differently than other browsers like Firefox. I was racking my brain to the point where it hurt.
On a hunch, I checked out all my other sites. I got more and more stressed out and angry when I realized that most of my sites were horribly broken in Internet Explorer. I needed to figure out why they looked like absolute shit.
I ran a mental list to see what they all may have in common. And this is what I came up with.
Most of them:
- Are hosted on Hostgator (it wasn’t the problem)
- Use the Wordpress 3.01 platform
- Used most of the same plugins
- Used themes I created in Artisteer
- are owned and run by me (flawed in many ways LOL)
I immediately nixed Hostgator and Wordpress as they are heavily supported and backed by their respective companies. That left me, my plugins and Artisteer.
I automatically figured it was Artisteer. I didn’t seem to have a problem with the sites when they were using free Wordpress themes. I didn’t want to give it up because Artisteer makes it simple and quick for me to make my own Wordpress themes. I did go to the Artisteer forums to look for answers. But to my dismay, Artisteer support was not up to par. A lot of people asking or complaining about Artisteer support. I was cranky that I had paid for another year’s worth of updates when support sucks.
I was ready to give Artisteer the boot so I started the unwanted search for free Wordpress themes that fit my criteria. Still, in the back of my mind I felt that Artisteer wasn’t the entire problem.
I couldn’t make any changes to the 2 sites that were up for sale on Flippa so I decided to test a christmas site that used Artisteer and plugins. I kept the theme in tact and instead, turned off all the plugins. Voila! The site was no longer broken! I was tickled pink that I didn’t actually have to do away with Artisteer.
So I painstakingly turned each plugin on, one by one. I kept refreshing the IE browser and things seemed ok… until I turned on Hyper Cache. Then the site was broken once again. “Yes!” I thought. I assumed that was the culprit.
It wasn’t. It was only half of the problem. I deactived the plugin from all the sites and they went back to normal again. However, refreshing the page a few times brought the sites to that ugly stage once more. I grit my teeth and wanted to pound my head on the wall.
I eventually figured out that it was both Hyper Cache and WP Minify that weren’t working well on my sites. They don’t work separately either, meaning that if one was deactivated and the other was not, the site was still broken. So I opted to have them both deactivated.
Lesson learned: always check your site for browser compatibility before selling it or sending traffic to it.
My Second Sale on Flippa
I believe I tried a couple times after my first sale on Flippa to sell a site but with no luck. I was getting frustrated.
So I decided to try something different. I built an ugly site. To me, it didn’t look ugly. It just looked plain and simple. There was no premium theme to it. I carefully picked the plugins for it. I wrote 6 unique articles and spun them each 5 times. I submitted 2 articles to directories. I submitted the site to search engines. I social bookmarked it. I built 4 free webpages including Squidoo and Blogger for the site. I even started and grew a twitter account to over 450 followers.
I tweaked the auction to include the above info. I put it up for 5 days and started it at $1 with a $297 BIN. On the 4th day I was getting nervous because no one had bid. There were 2 watchers. I was starting to think that I wasn’t going to the sell the site.
Then I got my first bid at $29. I was stoked. I had the reserve set at $59 and was tempted to lower it but hubby changed my mind. I ended up having 5 different bidders. I got to actually experience what it was like for my auction to get 3 hours added to its time several times. I lowered the BIN to $197. I was definitely excited.
In the end, the auction ended at $80. Granted it wasn’t the BIN. But it was more than my reserve and I made more than my first sale. So I was definitely happy about it. I made some money to buy a few gifts for my 4 year old’s birthday. Happy mom over here :) Baby steps right?
So I eagerly sent the winner a message in regards to the sale of the site. I was anxious to get paid and transfer the site.
The following day, the winner messaged me that he paid via Paypal and btw here is the info. He also said that I just needed to give him the wordpress files and database because he knows how to set up the site. Whoohoo! Easy peasy!
I was actually nervous because it seemed to easy compared to the previous sale. We did have an issue with mailing the files. But in the end he received it.
I received a message the following day from the winner saying that it was an absolute pleasure to work with someone who knows what she’s doing. My ego shot up a bit, I won’t lie. He told me that another seller sold him a site and gave him a zip file with the entire home directory in 100+ megs! Holy sh*t!
So I felt good about myself. On to site #3!