Writing a free Traffic Sharing Exchange web app to help people promote their websites.
Have you ever felt like you wanted to pound your head on the desk out of sheer frustration? That’s exactly how I felt more times than once during my recent foray into writing my first free Traffic Sharing Exchange web app design.
In fact I was so frustrated at times, I was close to putting a pillow on the desk to prevent from forming a callous on my forehead. It frustrated me to the point I would have seriously considered trading the whole ordeal for a session of hugging my cactus for comfort! All jokes aside, it was one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had.
Self inflicted hell?
So why put myself through the self-inflicted 9th level of computer coding hell? That’s a very good question! And one that I asked myself many times whilst building this web app. Why? Because I wanted to do something good for the world. I wanted to give something back and provide a free service that could genuinely help people get some much needed free traffic to their websites.
The next question I can already hear you asking… Did I succeed in my quest to provide a free Traffic Sharing Exchange web app that actually helps people get free traffic to their websites? The short answer is: Yes I did! After 3 weeks of head pounding frustration, I finally got there!
Onion peeling or writing a free Traffic Sharing Exchange?
The complexities of the app were akin to the layers of an onion and a tree-hugging hippy’s emotions after chopping it. Whilst I don’t condone anthropomorphizing vegetables, I can now appreciate and understand the nuanced and conflicted feelings one might experience when dealing with such mind numbing levels of complexity.
What started as a simple idea, soon grew into a Uranus sized pain in my… Grass! (Note to self: I need to mow my lawns). So what made it such a challenge? Why was it so frustrating? And why did such a simple idea become so complicated? Most of the iceberg like complexity came from security concerns. Knowing that this app would soon be released into the wild and as a public facing app, all manner of security would be required.
The allure of the simple idea…
“Providing a free Traffic Sharing Exchange web app”
It spurred me on in my quest to give something back to the world. The idea really was just the tip of the iceberg. What I thought would be a quick afternoon of easy and fun coding, turned into a mammoth 3 weeks of coding slog. One thing led to another and as I would complete one function, the security consequencs would open up another layer of the complexity onion.
A walk in the park or an almost insurmountable effort?
I’m sure for a classically educated coding professional, all of this would have been a walk in the park. But for someone like myself who is a self-taught coding amateur, it seemed like an almost insurmountable effort.
There were times when I would edit the code, upload the code, test the code and nothing would change. So I’d go back to the drawing board and make more changes and add more debugging statements to write to my error log. Clear my browser cache, run in incognito mode, save it again, upload it again, yet still nothing! No changes, no errors in the log and no solution to my problem. So I would rinse and repeat, re-check my code, rewrite some functions, change my approach several times until suddenly it would work the way I foresaw it.
When it dawned on me the releif was palpable!
It wasn’t until I hit a SSL snag that it dawned on me. I had completely forgotten that my webserver was running through Cloudflare, which adds a proxy layer and web cache to your website’s DNS. All this time I had been wrestling with a cloud based DNS cache. No wonder it was taking several attempts to get my edits to propagate.
At this point, I was 2 weeks in. I had second guessed myself a hundred times. I’d even employed the services of AI to check and double check my code. That was yet another layer of sheer hell. Wrestling with an AI that would help me fix one part of my code only to subtly screw up another section without me even realizing. It was almost like the AI was intentionally sabbotaging my efforts. It seemed like there was real resistance to me releasing this web app. Like some mysterious force didn’t want me to give this to the world.
Finally its done! I almost feel like an expectant father in the delivery waiting room. Or like Mufasa when Rafiki held up Simba… “The circle of life” Gosh now I’m bursting into song! What an emotional rollercoaster! So without any further ado, I give you…
“URLPromote” Free Traffic Sharing Exchange!
Its a simple yet powerful concept that will assist you in your website promotional efforts. As you promote your site, your efforts will compound using this free system, to build you an exponentially growing source of free traffic… 4 generations deep!
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