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Webmaster Tutorial Menu
Tutorial Home
Life before .htaccess
You have to start somewhere
Becoming a Webmaster
The steep learning curve
What to look for in books
How many hats?
Technical Job Description
Linux or Microsoft?
Standard web stuff
Basic HTML
Frames and/or Flash?
Site submission
Negotiating Links
Robots.txt
Validating your HTML
Web safe fonts
Web safe colours
Different screen & monitor sizes
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Javascript
'Nix specific stuff
Choosing a 'Nix hosting company
Web Logs Demystified
Web Log Status codes
Limitations of robots.txt (and the power of .htaccess)
Conclusion
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cost  effective,   fast  loading,   lightweight,   high  return  websites
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When do you 'become a Webmaster'?

You could assume from the title of the first page in this tutorial that I considered that I became a webmaster when I started using .htaccess. Not entirely true, that was coincidental... but it does lead to an important (and perhaps unanswerable) question:
Is a webmaster a technical or a business job?
I've found it to be a mixture of both and a little bit more. So, when do you become a webmaster - what event signifies the crossing of the line?
For me, becoming a webmaster was born out of the business need of a friend. He needed a technical solution to a business problem as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
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A friend in need

In February 2003 a friend who knew that I was "in computers" bought a domain name and wanted to get a site up and running to promote his latest project.
I gave him a little advice (not realising the potential for me of this project). Within a week he was totally disillusioned by the unreturned phone calls from his hosting company (and with the world wide web itself) and... it suddenly clicked that perhaps I could take over the whole kit and caboodle for him.
I phoned the hosting company he had bought his web space from, I phoned the companies that I had short listed for my own hosting needs (and none of these turned out to be adequate in the long run), I hassled them for service and price, I convinced my friend that he should exercise his 30-day money back guarantee and pay me rather than his current provider... and I breathed deeply.

I had become a Webmaster!

I was using my technical and business skills to create and maintain a web presence for another person / entity.
Perhaps that is an overly simplistic definition for some, but, put simply, that is all I was doing.
Obviously, things have progressed a little since then (as I'm still here to talk about it).
 
[Content of this page last reviewed: 12-Jun-2004]
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