Those of you who know will cringe at the thought. Those of you who don’t know are (in a sense) lucky to be so naive. I had hoped that the time had passed, the time when we would click open pages only to see:
Under Construction.
Will it ever end?
Alright, enough with the melodrama. Seriously, what used to be an epidemic has been stifled to a case of the common cold, luckily. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth treating.
The Reason for the Madness
I wish it were as simple as finding one reason that this trend has even taken place. But I can think of a couple. The ones that come to mind are:
- The designer wants to create all the pages he will ever want to add, today.
- The designer creates all the pages the client wants before there is content.
Both stem from the same conceptual problem: what you don’t do today will not get done tomorrow. By this I mean that when an Under Construction page is created, it is created because someone doesn’t want to take the time to build the page that needs to be built. In #1 above that’s the designer’s fault, in #2 it’s the client’s fault (but still technically the designer’s fault).
How to Fix the Problem
When clients want a bunch of pages, but haven’t taken the time to fill those pages with quality content ahead of time (or pay you to do it) then don’t create the page. Stand up for a quality internet by explaining to them the potential harm an empty page could do for them.
This goes the same for those webmasters who want to add pages that don’t yet have a purpose. It’s worse to add an empty page today than it is to wait a week or two and add a page that contributes. Just bite down on that self control for all its worth. Your users will thank you for it.
Originally posted on October 17, 2007 @ 1:14 pm