I hope i don’t come off as too forthcoming with that title, or sound as though i am trying to imply people need to know what exactly what a webmaster is,. and what the job actually entails.. simply because i think you should know..
I know that it differs so drastically its like comparing a new driver to a retired truck driver.. there’s alot of miles between here and “I know how to do that”. I will state now that i do think people should know because its people like us that keep everything going. I’m sure despite new technologies seeming to do everything on its own . shall we say a frankenstein that now lives? well that’s a double edge sword.. and so is the Internet.. and so is this job.. no.. its us dealing with denial attacks.. rerouting dns.. making thing better for You Guys!
its funny .. for all the people that are amazed when any data.. their data.. is being taken or stored,. or the amount of knowledge that goes into making simple things like automatically generated menus or booking applications that can manipulate dates and money,. then encrypt, store . convert . pass on to other applications. i swear there are just as many,. if not more,.. people that think i spend my days getting paid for nothing,. drinking lattes,.. and snowboarding.. although these facts are partially true, ill have you know i work mostly when your not..
I work when you get home and hit Facebook.
My days actually start before you get up.. and hit Facebook.
As a matter of fact those links in your friends Facebook posts about the state of the world.. and the things you want to know about things are on websites.. and for the most part those websites have awebmaster.
Given.. I may not know the exact syntax used by flash to tween images.. but i know what tweening an image will do.. that’s my job. As a webmaster i need to know everything.. i need to read three different information sources via white papers and news. one for google, one for Microsoft and one that keeps me in the loop for all things social – ie FB,. Twitter,. YouTube,. Dailymotion,. Vimeo..
Daily.
You see the thing is.. as soon as farmville (or other popular applications) create a way to interact with websites we.. and by we,. i mean webmasters.. need to create a way to incorporate this dribble of terribly formatted xml or god forbid fmbl.. i swear they made this language because they could. it serves no purpose other than to interact with itself. . and give crappy feeds from limited code sources.. and that goes for all parties. GUYS! Jesus! we dont need to reinvent the wheel 20 more times! they all in essence do the same damn thing.
you know who David Heinemeier Hanss is?
No Probably not.
this guy had gates and the other stuffed shirt guys left in the mud.. only he didn’t have a millionaire backing him.. he made this language called Rails..
you may have seen this red thing in your cpanel called ruby-on-rails.. ya he made that. .. not with your .php or .asp or xhtmlyz
he made it with python. .. and i lost ya .. didn’t i.. no?
i rant a little..
There are lots of designers and managers out there that aren’t making the money they were.. and even more brilliant minds that would give anything for full time work..
but their not webmasters. . new drivers.. retired truck driver.
when a customer calls me and asks how long it will take to create a chat application for his members area,. in the process of building his social standing,. running a search campaign for a 12 exact match and 30 phrase match keyword sets,. and another over the display network using a custom banner he asked me to do a week ago.. i know he doesn’t want to deal with 4 or 5 different people.
what he’s after is one company that will deal with his “Online Business Solution”.. and that means Everything.. without loosing out on Anything.. that wont rip him off because the company employs 50 people.. that’s alot of wages.. power.. resources..