KnowledgeTree Blog

Error! Not Found!

Last week I took to the task of setting up a few blog spaces for a few people in the company.

This should have been a simple procedure as it was documented. However, as a newbie to the setup, I ended up chasing my tail for hours without much reason.

I followed the instructions step by step, but when I tried to reference my blog space, I got a message ‘Not Found! Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.’ My interpretation was that there was something wrong with the setup - that the personalised blog space was not setup, or there was something wrong with the web server not finding my directory. All that was wrong was the fact I had not made an initial post!

Problems like this pop up in systems regularly. Error or status messages should be clear and to the point. A more appropriate response to the one I received would be ‘Sorry, but there are no posts to display.’

So a note on error messages - not all messages have to be detailed as that is what log files are for. Ideally, if an error is encountered, it should describe what the problem is and hint at a solution, or where more information can be found. If an error is system related, then it should suggest to the user to contact an administrator who can possibly deal with it, in which case enough information should be provided to the user to pass on. If it is related to input validation, it should hint at corrective measures the user should take to process the input.

Although I think I did waste quite a bit of time on setting up the blog spaces, I now understand the setup a little better, and have already updated the internal documentation so others that follow in my footsteps don’t have to go through the same frustration at a later date.

So to all you fellow programmers out there, remember to make messages with users in mind! Users don’t always understand code or have access to it and there is always some poor sod who ends up with too little information.