When it comes to most creative crafts such as coding, web design, or photography there is a very common issue with the artist wanting to maintain the purity of their chosen craft and the wants of the client. In design and photography it boils to the surface in obvious and clashing manners, often in the artistic direction of the whole project. It’s much more subtle when it comes to front-end and back-end development.
These kinds of clashes happen underneath the surface – a cleaner, but slower loop placement, A perfectly tabbed and spaced css document that takes twice the space and no one bothered to minify. Or, even worse, a developer stripping all of the functionality from a CMS to maintain control over the site.
Now, many f these may seem like small things. After all, a client will never know about that loop placement and they don’t REALLy need to be able to change the color of that one button. However, that .1 second you cost them might bump them from 3rd to 5th in the SERP.
I have a fascination with clean code and ensuring that everything I publish has the best possible syntax and structure. In fact, it’s become a bit neurotic over the past two years. But, I’ve also learned to balance that with a ruthless process of optimization and performance. Any site we put out at Old Town Media is quick and performs right – above the client’s expectations. We have a 68-point checklist on any site we make – from the lowest brochure site to the largest custom development project – that ensures every site we put out works perfectly.
Purity is great, clean code is great, but performance and meeting a client’s needs is more important that anything else.