How to become a webmaster

There are no specific steps or courses for becoming a webmaster. Moreover steps for becoming a successful webmaster are also not mentioned in any tutorial or ebooks. Yes there are some basic things that you must know but then in long run the rest depends on the learning, research and implementation of ideas that you have.

Lets start with basic things. Some might agree some won’t but I think a webmaster should have some knowledge of programming and servers. I know you can get freelancers and hire programmers or webmaster service providers to do your work but yet, I feel you should have the knowledge of this things otherwise you will come across more hurdles then anyone who has the knowledge of this things.
So for the basic things you should at least know What is a server, what is domain name, what is HTML and/or what is scripting, You should also know some basic retouching or designing (needed sometimes)
Assuming most of the people would like to go for PHP scripting lets also assume you will be dealing with Apache server and to make SEO friendly URL’s you might want to read some tutorials on .htaccess.
Changing domain name-servers, Installing scripts, modifying/CHMOD permissions on files and folders, FTP [Can use filezilla for FTP purposes] the ID and Passwords are the ones you use for your control panel login or you can create FTP users from the server control panel. The default port for FTP is 21.
You also need to keep your imagination going wild in every possible direction it can go. After that compare the imaginative ideas with the real life stuff and see if it is beneficial enough or not.
First of all you will need to choose a good domain name for your website.
Choosing a good script for your projects is also an important step, If you are a coder then you can always code out your own script. I personally hate all the webmasters scripts that are available to anyone for some bucks because using it doesn’t gives any uniqueness to my sites. I am only using 2 ready made scripts, one is MyBB for one forum and another is this Wordpress for this blog itself.
If your budget is limited and you have to go for a readymade or a turnkey script then you should tweak it a bit to make it unique and content in it should always be 100% unique. After that comes the part of managing and marketing the site. As well as building up more content and getting more traffic for your site.
You can take out some fixed hours out of your schedule and do the things that are needed or you can here also hire some webmaster services providers.
Marketing your site if it is a forum or a blog or a website you will need to do some SEO and marketing for it, in order to get traffic to your site(s).
You can refer to Complete Onpage SEO and Offpage SEO Part 1.
Forum promotions are explained over here: Promoting a Forum
Some common webmaster acronyms are mentioned here for your reference.
If you are using a dedicated server or you want to use SSH then you can refer to SSH commands reference guide.
If you are going to promote affiliate programs for monetizing your site then you can refer to Affiliate marketing techniques and Affiliate marketing techniques Part 2
My own story of being and becoming a webmaster is at Webmastering as a profession.

Webmaster Ethics

 

Well I have worked as a hired webmaster for lots of companies in past and I am still working for some. Recently I met one of my old client on MSN. He was asking me that can I take a look at his website. I said Yeah Sure.

His website is PR 6 right now and has alexa under 8K, everything was fine except one link. The link was going to an adult affiliate program from the main page. I asked him did he do it himself? He said No.
I asked him does he wants me to remove it. He said Yes. So I asked him for server passwords. I already knew his older password but its my duty to ask him before I enter the password and log into his server.
He gave me the same old password. I said okay. I went in killed the links. While I was in I also noticed that some more links were there on the white background with white color. Someone made it white on the purpose as the link was having font color white attribute.
I asked him again did he do it? He said No. I said okay. Go to your main page and Use CTRL + A [Select All] There were loads of white links in white background over there. So now it was obvious that someone was stealing links from the pages and making money off it.
I said if this is someone from your staff then you can catch them. But for now I will change the password and remove the links. We changed the password and removed all those links.
The links were sold on one popular links marketplace. So we emailed them and got the info that who was the one who was trying to sell them off and what was the paypal email address for receiving the money from those link sales. It was now clear that the guy who was hired as programmer sometime ago was doing it.
He got caught and fired. This type of things are happening and are happening with people almost everyday. Most of them don’t even know that it is happening with them. So its better to check on the guy before hiring him.
Also for professional webmasters and programmers, they should not do this kind of stuff. Once the client gives you their password it is your responsibility to see that no harm is done. There still will be people who have no ethics so expecting good results from them is a waste of time. As a buyer of the service all you can do is just trust the right person and also keep your eyes open. It won’t hurt if you just perform small checks on your own website. After all its your website.

How to check if your website is fully optimized for the search engines

Having a well-designed website is just half of the task of ensuring that your new website is able to power charge your sales performance and rake in more profits for your business. You must also invest on the necessary tools so that your site ranks high in search engine results, and the key to achieving this goal is search engine optimization.

Having your site optimized for search engine is one thing, and making sure that your site if truly optimized for search engine is another thing. When you decide to have your site optimized by a freelance web developer in London, it’s important that you have a checklist of “must-haves” to ensure that your web developer understands what you want.
Critical elements required in getting search engine results shall include:
1. Content – Content is king: this probably is the most overused phrase when it comes to selling the idea of search engine optimization. We have to remember that this is actually the heart and soul of SEO. Among all the things that need to be present in order to optimize your site for the search engines, your content is probably the single most important element that you must focus on. You have to make sure that your clients see your clear edge over the competition in terms of the extent and quality of content of your site. Otherwise, you will only see increases in your bounce rate and not on your online sales.
2. Title Tag – It is essential that you keep your titles as engaging and simple as possible. They must be able to stir the interest of your readers. Titles that carry a strong punch is what you will need in order to keep visitors to your site and glued to your sales pages. In addition to this, you must also remember that your title must address the secondary as well as tertiary needs of your other keywords on the pages of your site. This will also ensure that your pages will have the sufficient pull for more click-throughs from visitors who are randomly searching sites for relevance.
3. Default Meta Description – While you may have awesome content in your pages, there is a great possibility that it can be diffused or vague. The Meta description shall help your target client searching for topic specific content with the relevant snippet in search engine result pages.
4. Transference and Link weight – The amount of links that deliver value to the pages of your site are what pushes your pages past your ardent competitors on the Net. From one specific standpoint, this event is anchored on the simultaneous occurrence along with the current state of your reputation and momentum. In which case, any link that provides value shall be the link that the search engines will assess in as far as importance, prominence and relevance are concerned. This is made possible through your internal links, inbound links from popular sites and pages within your site with its topic titles and tags.
While there are definitely other things that you have to include in your checklist when assessing whether your site is optimized or not, these four elements are the key variables that must be present if you want your site optimized for the search engines.

Blogger Tips Tricks now using 4 column template optimized for 1064x768 screen resolution

Blogger Tips and Tricks is now 4 column and optimized for 1024x768 pixels screen resolution as well as AdSense. Blogger Tips and Tricks now used a 4 column fixed width Minima template with widths of 450 pixels for main column, 163, 163 and 164 pixels for the 3 sidebars respectively. Rationale for the change is as follows:

Below are the most recent system statistics (visitors' screen resolution):

Visitors' screen resolution bar chart

Visitors' screen resolution in percentage

This showed that today, only less than 1% of visitors have the small screen resolution of 800x600 pixels while 32% has screen resolution 1024x768 pixels. Visitors having screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels and bigger total slightly over half have screen resolution over 83. This means that the vast majority of visitors to this blog with this new template will not have to use the horizontal scroll bar

to view all the content of this blog with this new 4 column template optimized for 1024x768 pixels screen resolution.

The main column (content) was only increased from 400 pixels to 450 pixels. This is because as discussed in What is the best template?, a readability study showed that content should be around 60 CPL (characters per line). I tend to agree because I use a wide screen and when I come across text which stretches the whole breath of my wide screen, I find it difficult to read and to scan. When I read until the end of one line, I have to search for the beginning of the next line and that can be a bit difficult as the end of a line and the beginning of the next line can be separated by a large distance.

The sidebars were kept to slightly over 160 pixels because the popular AdSense skyscraper (wide vertical banner) ad unit is 160x600 pixels and will then just fit in nicely in any of the 3 sidebars.

If you want this template, please go to 4 column New Blogger template.

How to change email address for Blogger login

"How do I associate my blogspot blog with a new gmail address? I want to keep the content and change the gmail account." (the answer to this will also be applicable for those who have more than 1 blog but will like different PROFILE for different blogs)

If you want to use a different email address, whether gmail or other email address, to access Blogger, all you have to do is to sign into Dashboard and click SETTINGS > PERMISSION and add yourself with the new email address as an author.



Now for convenience, it is best you open another browser (see why I have so many browsers in my computer) without signing out of Blogger. Sign into your new email address and you should see a message from Blogger which should be the one containing the invitation. Accept the invitation.

Update: From a commentator: " I tried adding my yahoo email and I made it an admin but I couldn't log in. So, I created another gmail account and viola! It worked"

My response: Actually, any email address will do, not only gmail. Only thing is, that email should have associated with it a Blogger/Google account, and if it doesn't, it is easy to create one for the purpose of becoming an author/administrator

Now go back to your Blogger account in the other browser where you are still logged in and in the PERMISSION tab. You should see your other email address added as an author. Give yourself admin rights. Now if you are sure that you have added yourself with the new email address (I suggest you double check), you may remove yourself with the old email address if you wish.