You know what they say about assumptions
Last year, I added a comments feature to my blog. During development, I verified the change by checking that the comments section existed on a post. It did, #shipit. After almost a year, someone told me that their comments and reactions weren’t showing. It turns out that I had set up Giscus incorrectly from the start 😫! And if that person hadn’t said anything, I would’ve been clueless.
The fix was trivial, I changed data-categories in my Giscus setup to point to the correct discussion category "Blog Post Discussions", not "Announcements" (here’s the commit).
I took one lesson away from this experience. Something I probably should’ve already known.
Just because it’s a personal project doesn’t mean I should take shortcuts with testing
Here’s the test cases I should’ve run through:
- Does the comment section load when I view a blog post?
- Can I post a comment?
- Does the comment section show the new comment?
- Can I put images/gifs in the comment?
- Can I add a reaction?
- Does the reaction show?
- If a comment is posted, do I get a notification?
- Can I reply to a comment?
- Does the reply show up with the comment?
Writing out the test cases, it feels obvious that I should’ve gone through them. I shouldn’t release something that’s untested. But these things happen. Especially for projects where I’m rushing, tired, or overconfident. Maybe a combination of all three. At least now the comments work, I manually verified the test cases. Happy days.