The number in your marketing copy is a bug waiting to happen
Our site claimed four different template counts at the same time. 86, in 34 article files 82, in nine places including the pricing constants "100+", on a landing page 96, in the marketing kit The real number was none of them. This had happened before on the same codebase: the site once advertised "200+" against roughly 80, which had to be corrected as an honesty problem rather than a typo. A…
The source material describes a bug in a marketing website's copy that resulted from inconsistent template counts mentioned across various parts of the site. The site claimed four different template counts simultaneously, with discrepancies ranging from 82 to 96. These inconsistencies were present in multiple locations, including article files, a landing page, a marketing kit, and version comments.
The bug persisted due to multiple reasons, including scanning the wrong directories, an exclusion filter that missed certain file types, and a pattern that assumed specific phrasing in the marketing copy.
To address the issue, a script was written to compute the accurate template count and compare it against the site's codebase. This script successfully identified the discrepancies and corrected them. However, the article also highlights the broader issue of having a number mentioned repeatedly in different places within a product's marketing copy.
Such numbers are often scattered across various files and directories, making it challenging to ensure their consistency. The article emphasizes the importance of writing a robust verifier that not only checks for the correct number but also verifies its own integrity by testing against known bad values. This practice can help prevent similar issues in the future, especially when marketing copy includes numbers like templates, integrations, users, or countries.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
