Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress WordPress Theme Development Custom Post Type Templates in WordPress The Portfolio Single Page

Ian Mackenzie
Ian Mackenzie
11,062 Points

Too many mistakes in this course!

At 05:09 in this video, the teacher creates another mistake. It seems just about every video in this course seems to have a coding mistake or an omission made by the teacher.

Not good enough for a professional training company like Treehouse to be publishing this type of content.

It's difficult enough understanding the concepts but when the teacher adds his own mistakes to the mix then it's very unprofessional and adds another layer of complexity that is unwanted.

Umm... I guess they just want the courses to feel natural.

Christopher Loyd
Christopher Loyd
Courses Plus Student 5,806 Points

They're teaching you what not to do :) There's always a silver lining.

Ian Mackenzie
Ian Mackenzie
11,062 Points

I don't think I need a reminder not to deliver a blank page to my clients. I think the bar needs to be raised to visible at least, don't you?

Couldn't agree more. I was just thinking the same thing before noticing your comment. It wastes a lot of my time and takes the fun out of it for me.

7 Answers

Zac Gordon
STAFF
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest Teacher

You raise a good point here. We had actually received guidance internally that they wanted our courses to appear more "real" so that students could see us go about troubleshooting and showing the natural process of coding. I feel what you mean though about the benefits of having a completely polished course with no mistakes.

Ian Mackenzie
Ian Mackenzie
11,062 Points

If this was a module in this course for debugging Wordpress I would understand that approach, however how can you identify what's going wrong until you have a good understanding of how to do it right.

It's highly unusual for Treehouse or any other training organisation to bake mistakes into their teachings without telling the student of their intent or without providing corrections.

I'm not sure how many students would be frustrated enough to give up on this course, but I suspect there would be a few and I was almost one of them.

Christopher Loyd
Christopher Loyd
Courses Plus Student 5,806 Points

Ian, you were able to identify the mistakes, were you not? Then I don't think it was a misrepresentation.

I love when videos make errors, as long as they correct them. I find myself learning better this way. If everything went perfect, myself as a developer would never tap into my problem solving skills. And to be honest, that's where the money at. Being a problem solver is invaluable to a company, not a Borg drone LOL.

Zac, it would be great if you would list in the course docs where the mistakes are in each module and how to correct them - both the ones that are corrected and not corrected in the videos themselves. I have a very limited time each day for learning this stuff and debugging coding mistakes is really hampering my ability to move quickly through this course. At times, I get so stumped that I feel like quitting the course.

Weihao Luo
Weihao Luo
2,703 Points

Zac, you made two mistake in this video. My friends and me almost gave up.

caroline
caroline
6,974 Points

Hi Zac - it's one thing making the course more 'real', but we need to know immediately whether something not working is due to an error in the code in the video or an error we've made. In other Treehouse courses I know that when something doesn't work it's because I've made an error, and I don't mind troubleshooting it because it's all part of the learning process. However, during this course I'm always wondering whether I'm wasting my time checking my code against the code in the video (because that might not be the cause of the problem). Please, Treehouse, find some way of highlighting the errors in the videos so we don't have to waste hours trying to figure out what's causing problems. As Phillip commented - this is a WordPress course, not a debugging course!

Yann Hulot
Yann Hulot
5,356 Points

Another mistake in portfolio single page

5:12 min

The endwhile before the the endif doesnt require parentheses before the comma.

In the video:

php enwhile(); endif; =>> error

In reality:

php endwhile; endif =>> success

. if you put the parenthesis, you will get an error but in the video it seems to work just fine and that baffles me. Could anybody please check those videos before you upload them? Thanks .

This bothered me alot. Please do not do this on purpose.

It is demoralizing.

Got stuck an hour due to this. I blindly thought it was right haha.

Ian Mackenzie
Ian Mackenzie
11,062 Points

It's feedback, that's all I'm providing. Smart business practice is to take customers feedback onboard and continue to improve the way they do things, which is what I hope Treehouse does with this course.

I agree. But when you put a little bit of ignorance to the feedbacks, those feedbacks become feed-trash.

Yann Hulot
Yann Hulot
5,356 Points

I agree with phillip parker. I am a beginner/intermediate html,css and php develloper and i find it frustrating that i have to figure out what went wrong in my code when i have checked and rechecked the code given in the video and can't seem to find my mistake.

For example, when we are instructed to create the left-sidebar.php , there is a div missing in the coding video. How did i notice it? i have watched the video many times over thinking that i somehow made a mistake and that was the reason my sidebar wasn't showing up properly. But in fact after looking at MY code which was the same as the video , it was clear that something was wrong. I added the div and things worked out fine. But i wasted 45 minutes to figure it out.

Again, as i am writing this , i am watching the portfolio single page tutorial. At 3:40 minutes in the video , you will see the code written by the instructor. There is a div missing at the bottom.

1 sections opens up 4 divs open up; 2 divs closed; 2 divs open up; 2 divs close Then you should have 2 closing divs at the end and a closing section tag but we can see that there is a div missing.

also, the instructor tells us that the code "php endif" needs to be written at the end of the Row div. but in the video , the instructor is clearly shown pasting the code just before the closing tag div of the " small-12-column" div.

Now because i know this , if my page doesn't display correctly, at least i know that i can go back to my code and change the divs around and fix a potential problem. But if somebody doesn't notice those mistakes then they may end up frustrated , angry and desperate because they cant't figure out what went wrong.

I undestand that the isntructors want us to see what it is like to code "live" but maybe they should put a disclaimer at the beginning of the video saying that this video contains some mistakes and students should try to find them and fix them before the teacher does it himself in the next videos.

Andres Altuve
Andres Altuve
16,274 Points

I rather see those errors while learning than getting them and waste time trying to figure out what is going on...

I would agree with you if the errors where always corrected in the videos; however, there have been several that Zac never corrects. It leaves a student like me extremely frustrated trying to figure out where the problem is in the code. Considering that I only have an hour or so a day to do this, I want to learn it the right way first. Not spend it trying to troubleshoot the courses mistakes. I'm here to learn Wordpress, not debugging code.

Ricardo NZ
PLUS
Ricardo NZ
Courses Plus Student 94 Points

Not just to many error but where is the support? I cannot make this single page to work and other people with similar problem that I am encountering ask the same questions 2 months ago!!!

Don't blame Zac, blame whoever developed the HTML prototype. I reckon the mistakes through out this course are because of the scappy, messy nature of the prototype HTML being used.