Excuse me, could you move your canon?

Could you pick up that cement block, please?

Could you pick up that cement block, please?

Let’s take the canon foundation example in the photo. It looks like a simple enough piece of cement. Couldn’t we just get a crowbar and hoist it up with a pulley and move it to the other side of the walkway? Sure, we could do that.

It’s a bit cause and effect: what’s going to happen to element B when you move element A?

Maybe nothing at all. Maybe it’s all fine, nothing was bothered, no code got jumbled. Of course, we might not know right away either. Maybe after a while it turns out that something did get broken. Some other element was depending on that first element. But we didn’t know until later. Yep, that could happen.

I got a comment asking how to move the navigation to somewhere else in the site. First of all, I wasn’t exactly sure what the commenter meant and secondly, maybe I just didn’t understand why he’d want to move the navigation there anyway. Finally, it’s one of those trickier items where you have to get your hands dirty with a bit of code. A navigation is a vital element of a site and if you’re using a premium site, probably has things like responsive design built into conditional statements (e.g. if viewing on a phone, use the mobile nav). So if we go mucking about too much with it, we just need to make sure we’re covering our tracks. It would take some testing to see if it worked and then some browser testing and don’t forget making sure we’re upgrade proof.

So, uh, can you move the nav?

Sure, we can move the nav, but let’s think first about why we’re doing it, the consequences of that and then the cost, time, and future of the change. Then we can see if it’s worth it.