Or "Wait a second.. what is that burning smell!?"

Now that things have calmed down a bit with WhyGoSolo, I'd like to give a bit of my perspective...

Whenever you launch a site, there are going to be problems.  Some are going to be tiny and only detectable by the handful of people actively working on it.  Others are going to be so large that you briefly consider giving up technology and living in a tree.  Regardless, they all need to be dealt with... so the questions become:  How and when?

In my book, there are three types of issues and each requires a different response:

First, there are tweaks.  These can be spelling errors, broken images, bad punctuation, or a variety of other things.  These are not functional things at all.  These probably aren't preventing people from using the site.  They're probably not breaking things.  More than anything, they just annoy your users (or your boss) and hurt the credibility of your site.

I never thought "plush toys" would be a tag on this site...

At the DCPHP Conference this year, we had a new entrant to the arena of ideas: The ElePHPant.

The PHP elephant is the culmination of a dream of a gentleman by the name of Damien Seguy*. After years of pitching, convincing, and pleading with the development community to pick up his idea, he finally found a group crazy dedicated enough to help make it happen.

When the elePHPants appeared at DCPHP this past week, they were an immediate hit. The few that were set up on the registration were posed and re-posed on a regular basis. Finally, once the happy hour began on Wednesday evening, the elePHPants began migrating from Damien to their proud new owners. By the end of Thursday, every elePHPant had a new home... including one right next to my printer.

If you'd ever wanted an elephant but don't have the budget, contact Damien for this more... cost effective solution. Pictures are available here.