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Website Building: Lessons from 10+ Contractor Sites
July 06, 2026 · 14 min read
🏗️ Website Building Lessons
Lessons from building contractor websites, deployment, SEO, hosting, DNS.
Lesson 2026-04-14: Cloudflare Free Tier Limits
Category: website-building
What We Were Trying To Do
Serve website content and API endpoints through Cloudflare Workers for atlas-automation.co
What We Tried
Deployed multiple routes through a single Cloudflare Worker — contact forms, image upload, site serving
What Went Wrong
Free tier hit daily rate limit. Multiple routes all consuming from the same limit pool. All routes returned 503 errors simultaneously with no graceful fallback.
How We Fixed It
- Identified the rate limit was at Cloudflare tier level (all routes share one pool)
- Waited for daily reset (~midnight UTC)
- Upgrade to paid plan required for production use
What To Do Next Time Instead
- Check free tier limits BEFORE building on a platform
- Have a backup plan (alternative hosting)
- Separate critical vs non-critical routes
- Set up monitoring for limit consumption
Could Be A PDF Chapter?
Yes — "Don't Let Free Tier Limits Kill Your Website: What I Learned From Cloudflare"
Lesson 2026-04-14: Image Upload CORS Headers
Category: website-building / automation
What We Were Trying To Do
Upload images from browser directly to Airtable
What We Tried
- First: Cloudflare Worker as proxy (hit rate limits)
- Second: Direct browser → Airtable API fetch
What Went Wrong
Browser fetch to Airtable returned 403. The Content-Type header wasn't being set explicitly — browser assumed wrong content type for the PATCH request.
How We Fixed It
Added explicit Content-Type: application/json header to the browser fetch call. No proxy needed.
What To Do Next Time Instead
- Browser API calls need EXPLICIT headers every time
- Never assume the browser will infer Content-Type correctly
- Test with curl first to confirm the API contract
Could Be A PDF Chapter?
Yes — "Browser to API: Why Your Fetch Requests Keep Failing (And How to Fix Them)"
Lesson 2026-04-14: Verify Before Declaring Fixed
Category: website-building
What We Were Trying To Do
Fix a quote button on a contractor website that wasn't submitting to the contact form
What We Tried
Made code changes to the button handler, told Scott it was fixed
What Went Wrong
Told Scott it was fixed before actually deploying the change. When Scott checked, it still didn't work because the fix wasn't live yet.
How We Fixed It
Deployed the changes, then verified the live URL actually worked before telling anyone.
What To Do Next Time Instead
- Never say "it's fixed" until you've verified the LIVE URL
- Deploy first, confirm second, communicate third
- "Verify or deploy before telling him it works"
Could Be A PDF Chapter?
No — internal operations lesson
Lesson 2026-04-07: DNS Migration Confusion
Category: website-building
What We Were Trying To Do
Change DNS for a domain from Carrd.co to Cloudflare Pages
What We Tried
Told Scott to change a CNAME record in his DNS dashboard
What Went Wrong
Scott couldn't find the DNS settings described — the UI was unfamiliar to him because it was a different registrar/DNS provider than expected.
How We Fixed It
Walked him through step by step with numbered instructions for his specific dashboard. He executed successfully once he had clear guidance.
What To Do Next Time Instead
- Always provide numbered, step-by-step instructions for Scott's specific dashboard
- Don't assume he knows where settings are
- Use screenshots if possible, or very specific navigation paths
- "Click Settings → DNS → Add Record" not "change your CNAME"
Could Be A PDF Chapter?
Yes — "DNS for Non-Techies: A Step-by-Step Guide to Changing Your Domain Settings"
Lesson 2026-04-15: Deployment Tools — Check Before Promising
Category: website-building
What We Were Trying To Do
Generate PDF documents for client deliverables
What We Tried
Promised PDF generation capability without first checking if the tools were installed
What Went Wrong
No wkhtmltopdf installed on the server. Couldn't generate PDFs when needed.
How We Fixed It
Installed wkhtmltopdf on the server. But the damage was done — the promise was made without capability.
What To Do Next Time Instead
- "Pessimistic review should catch this" — always check tool availability before promising
- Before any new project: query system for required dependencies
- Build a "tool requirements checklist" per project type
Could Be A PDF Chapter?
Yes — "The Pessimistic Review: How to Stop Overpromising and Start Delivering"
Lesson 2026-06-10: WordPress-to-Static-Site Pipeline Leaves Broken Pages
Category: website-building
What We Were Trying To Do
Generate a deployable static HTML site for landscape-greensboro.com from WordPress template + CSV data.
What We Tried
Used a Python build script to render 20 pages from a WordPress HTML template and CSV, outputting to landscape-greensboro-static/.
What Went Wrong
The build script had multiple issues that left the site unusable:
- No HTML document wrapper — pages started with
- Broken contact form —
[fluentform id="1"] is a WordPress shortcode, meaningless in static HTML
- No CSS — the template had CSS in