The Bright Side of Not Getting What We Want

Revisiting code, I wondered about free web hosting sites so I would have the luxury of implementing code for concepts I’ve been toying with. They’re not ground breaking ideas. These ideas are already in use by several. It’s about learning how to create them and deploy them for different purposes.

During my research about free web hosting sites that allow CSS and Javascript ended with someone’s comment in a thread that everything worth anything to a business isn’t free. They asked, “Why do so many people want something for free?”

Excellent question. Conversely, from a student perspective, resources can be limited. This triggered a consideration. How often will we be building something from scratch? Unless we are freelancing for small businesses on a regular basis, more often than not we will be working with systems that already exist.

SharePoint, Google, WordPress are great examples of what we’re likely to run into. Instead of being asked for extra money, we are prompted to contact the system administrators for the proper access permissions. The process of requesting access rights can be daunting. Why do we need access? Do we really need those rights? Can we accomplish the same goal through another means?

This requires some out-of-the-box thinking. Some people call it hacking. I call it exploring options. Several end-users have expressed their distaste for SharePoint. Understandably so because the system is locked down tight to prevent inadvertent network security holes.

The bright side of not using a free web hosting site is forcing us to play with what is available. If we want to do more, then it’s reasonable to ask for more funds to pay for the additional system resources that will be used. There are paychecks that the company has to pay and the expenses have to be recovered from somewhere.

Meanwhile, this is the perfect opportunity to think about other ways to implement code in a SharePoint environment that prevents several features from being used by a general user.

Below was an experiment after I pasted some code to see what would happen. It was more than I anticipated. I expected an error with a jumbled mess. That’s not so bad after all. There are other ways to simulate web deployment. Working with what we have can help turn a weakness into a strength. We know what we don’t like and what we cannot do. Now, what can we do?