Back to Feed
article 3m read

The Pricing link on my landing page opened another copy of the landing page

A restyle turned every menu link into a new-tab link, including the ones that just scroll down the page. The same rebuild had dead legal links, a security file published twice, and a free-tier promise that got fixed in one spot and survived in another.

Article DepthPractice

Flow

What each promise looked like after the merge

  1. 1Menu links

    New-tab only for links marked as leaving the site. No test yet.

  2. 2Footer legal links

    Now point at real pages instead of missing spots.

  3. 3Security file

    One copy left. Contact still goes to the home page.

  4. 4Machine files

    Hand-typed dates, and a file name that may not match its convention.

  5. 5Free plan promise

    One unlimited line trimmed. A second copy remains.

For a couple of commits, the Pricing link on my landing page opened a second copy of the landing page.

The top menu has three links that just jump down the same page: Features, Pricing, and How It Works. During the rebuild, all three were set to open in a new tab, on desktop and on phones. So a click gave you a new tab of the page you were already on, and the back button had nothing to go back to. I found this by reading the code changes, not by clicking.

A restyle undid the right version

An earlier commit had it right. Only menu links marked "this leaves the site" opened a new tab, and no link had that mark yet. Then a design pass replaced that check with "always open a new tab". No test covered the menu, and the menu looks the same in a screenshot either way. The check came back in the commit that answered review comments, and that commit is where the mark was first added to the menu entries.

The right design opens a new tab only for links flagged as leaving the site.

New tabs make sense for other people's sites. For your own page they just get in the way. I'd keep that flag in the data and add a small test that checks one in-page link and one outside link. I haven't written it yet.

Legal links that went nowhere

The footer links for Privacy, Terms and Security pointed at spots on the page that didn't exist. Clicking them did nothing, with no error. The rebuild added real policy pages, plus a cookie policy, and pointed Security at the standard place for a security contact file. Links to docs that weren't ready were taken out instead of left broken.

The security file went up twice

That security file went up in two places at once, and one copy said the other was the real one. Both had an expiry date. Review removed the extra copy. The one left still lists the home page as its contact, which isn't a way to report a problem, and nobody is named to renew it before it expires in about a year.

Files written for machines

The sitemap and a summary file for AI tools have dates typed in by hand, so they'll go stale. The summary file's name also doesn't match the name its convention uses, so tools looking for it may never find it.

An unlimited free tier the price card doesn't offer

The free plan card shows a limit on users. One line on the page promised an unlimited free tier, and that line got fixed. A second copy of the same promise, near the bottom of the page, did not. It's still waiting for the same one-word edit.

Keep reading

Pick up a connected idea or branch into a nearby one.

5 paths forward