Hoe het starten van een website en een raket in wezen hetzelfde zijn

We zijn behoorlijk grote fans van ruimteverkenning op het Solodev-kantoor.

( We hebben de ruimtepakken om het te bewijzen .)

Ruimtevaart vertegenwoordigt het gebruik van het beste van innovatie en creativiteit om doelen te bereiken die ooit als onmogelijk werden beschouwd. En omdat we in centraal Florida zijn, hebben we uitstekende toegang tot bijna elke lancering vanuit de historische lanceerplatforms van het Kennedy Space Center.

Dus toen Elon Musk een poging bevestigde voor Falcon Heavy, de krachtigste raket die tot nu toe ooit op de markt is gebracht, hebben we een waakfeest gepland op het dak van de parkeergarage.

De anticipatie, de opbouw, de zenuwen - het voelde vertrouwd aan. Zou de raket lanceren tot succes? Of zou het doen wat Musk zelf vreesde ; zou de raket in een ramp ontploffen?

Voor iedereen die naast miljoenen over de hele wereld heeft gekeken, was de lancering een succes.

En vanaf de top van onze parkeergarage was het echt heel erg cool om live te zien.

Het SpaceX-team lanceerde een onmogelijk groot object op een onmogelijk ver verwijderde plaats met een onmogelijk absurde lading.

En toch zijn die onmogelijkheden nu werkelijkheid.

At Solodev, we get to see our clients’ websites reach those realities in just as exciting ways — just without the livestreaming and David Bowie music. With each new website launch, we get a small fraction of the jitters that SpaceX employees felt yesterday. It stems from finally seeing the hard work of a lot of people come to life.

We’ve seen blood donation groups leverage their website goals in times of crisis and ultimately connect people with life-saving resources as quickly as possible. We’ve seen a school district completely reinvent the “boring, outdated" school website. We’ve also seen large organizations migrate thousands of pages from legacy websites into one fresh, new, and inventive webspace for tens of thousands of users.

Have an idea for a digital experience you’d like to see launched into reality? Here are some lessons from SpaceX’s launch that will keep you inspired during your web building process:

It started with a seemingly crazy idea.

Sure the world had rockets before, but rockets sending outlandish payloads to Mars?

Want your website to offer modules, programs and apps never seen before? Want an entirely new integration of your stack? You’ll have WYSIWYG website builders (even the big names) telling you that it’s not possible. And if your dreams could be made possible, it’s only after your website is weighed down with a lot extra code.

But, like SpaceX, you don’t have to restrict yourself to the status quo. It just takes building the right team that believes in your vision — and one with minimal roadblocks.

When challenges pop up, you have to remind yourself why you started.

Throughout the Falcon Heavy building process, SpaceX consistently provided updates via social media and their website to foster interest in what they’re doing. And when it seemed like the company wouldn’t make it to the launch pad, the SpaceX team and fans had a list of prior successes and goals to remember.

While it’s not feasible to share your website updates with visitors, having a go-to list of reasons why you wanted to complete the project will help when snags come up. Maybe there’s an issue with the server or the web speed isn’t quite where you want it yet.

It’s tempting to walk away from the project or compromise on the specifics after hitting a perceived wall.

But the beauty of web development is that if there isn’t a solution yet, one can be built.

It probably takes longer than you originally thought.

Shortly after Musk and the SpaceX team debuted the Falcon Heavy, the company initially aimed for mid 2017 as a launch date. And then that got pushed back to possibly December 2017. Ultimately, the Falcon Heavy launched in February 2018. SpaceX continually added and innovated to ensure a successful flight, and sometimes that meant pushing back a deadline (or two).

Expression: “It’ll happen when it’s perfect."

In today’s world of instant gratification and instant results, it’s tempting to demand a website in seconds and expect it to be exactly what you want. But the entire process from initial consultations to designing a custom framework to crafting a content strategy takes a lot longer than WYSIWYG website builders promise.

But then again, WYSIWYG builders don’t cater to your dream. They cater to the masses.

It ‘takes a village’ to make a launch possible.

There are a lot of moving parts to each SpaceX launch. The Falcon Heavy rocket involved 27 engines, three times more than typically used for a usual SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Anyone who watched the live-stream event saw hundreds of SpaceX employees who’d invested in the rocket’s success crowded together waiting for launch.

Big dreams often require a lot of essential parts to bring that dream into a reality.

Building a website also involves finding that perfect storm of technology and people. You need excellent, UX-focused web design, an efficient interface, reliable server capacity, security, stack integration, and maybe even specific modules tailored to your website’s visitors’ needs. You need a team of people who will do as much as they can to keep your website in flight — ideally with 24/7/365 availability.

It’s risky.

Every single launch coming out of the Kennedy Space Center, from NASA, from SpaceX, and other rocket companies involves risk. It seemed like everything was perfect for the Curiosity Rover’s landing to Mars in 2012 except for one element of the landing:

7 minutes of silence. 7 minutes of terror.

And in those 7 minutes, ground control completely lost contact with the rover — until it (thankfully) made it through the atmosphere and onto the Martian surface.

For web dev teams, the feeling of hitting the “big red launch button" and losing control for a brief 7 seconds can stretch time into 7 minutes.

Whether it’s migrating landing pages with an entirely new system or bringing a custom-fit CMS to life, there are moments when you say “Will this really work?" And that question is shortly followed by a slight panic and a “What was our backup plan again?"

Thanks to recent upgrades in web dev and hosting, however, companies have reduced those risks down to almost nothing. Cloud software like Amazon Web Services offers 99.999 uptimes and one of the safest platforms in the world. Web dev companies have made it easier for enterprises big and small to migrate their web experience dreams from one platform to another.

Risk still exists, but in web dev, the safety net has gotten significantly larger.

The success of your launch can inspire others to do the same.

SpaceX’s commercial success not only continually challenges industry heavyweights like ULA, it’s also managed to inspire other ventures to attempt larger and loftier goals. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin project — which predated SpaceX on landing a reusable rocket — is pushing toward Mars as well with technology attempting to piggy-back off of SpaceX’s learning curves.

When it comes to websites, one update can trigger more in your industry (and even beyond). So if you want to build a school website that doesn’t suck, your new look could inspire others in your community to reevaluate their own website’s functionality.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

Er is zeker een wetenschap en een kunst achter het lanceren van uw website. Maar u hoeft uw nieuwe website niet alleen te bouwen en te lanceren. Werk samen met een betrouwbaar webontwikkelingsbedrijf dat uw behoeften kent. Zoek een groep die de klok rond ondersteuning biedt voor als je zegt: "Houston, we hebben een probleem." Zorg ervoor dat je websiteteam je visie begrijpt en omarmt met het vermogen om je dromen te verwezenlijken.

Het is tenslotte geen rocket science (bedoelde woordspeling).