What's The Most Challenging Aspect of A Webmaster's Job?

THE most challenging aspect of being a webmaster IMHO, is the clients limitations on your work. working inside a small box built by a client who relies on his teenage son for IT advice, is harder then working for the client with no idea who allows you to impress them with what can be done.

The rest is all gravy.

All I do really is programming, I find designing difficult. Difficult to the point where I won't do any of it. All graphics must be supplied to me or I'll find someone to do the design work for me. Yes, I am that bad at it.

The hardest part of a webmistresses job is putting up with webmasters! LOL

Seriously though, the hardest part I find is finding time to learn all those things I want to learn, like php. I'm so busy that it just keeps getting put on the backburner and if I don't get around to it soon it'll be burned to a crisp!

I'd have to say the client side of it can be the worst, every now and then you get a client who wants all the mutli colored text, spinning this and that because they saw it on a site and it "looks neat", so then you have to try explain it wont sell the product or service and sometimes even make up a site to prove it.
Then there is the last minute changes, indecision ... then again you can get some really good clients who say "go for it, it's all yours"

It depends how you define webmaster. I don't see my web design role with clinets as being a "webmaster" - that's the "web designer" part. I do provide technical advice, maintenance, etc. etc. for gymn.ca, and I do consider that to be a "webmaster" role. The biggest challenge for me is finding time! I'm lucky to have some very dedicated people taking care of the content, but they do need support from me from time to time. It's also challenging to find good services for free.

I would say the hardest part is dealing with ignorant clients. But I've learned it the hard way, when I'm meet up with a client now I tell him to have everything he wants written down on a piece of paper and we'll take it from there. I tell them to really think about what they want because if I program something this way and then when it's finished they want to change it, it's going to cost them and it's going to take longer time so really sit and think about what they want. Also I help them with ideas and suggestions of what I think would be the best way to do things. It usually works out great

The hardest part, IMO, is managing the business and promotion and marketing. It annoys me how so many people jump on the bandwagon of building sites, mastering PHP, etc., yet they leave out the most important of them all. Afterall, what good is a web site if you have no marketing or promotion skills to attract visitors?

hmmmm

i would say dealing with those spammers who love to take advantage of their random ips and become immune to your ban system at your forums. grrrr thats always the hardest part!!

another thing would be making a layout compatible with all browsers/resolutions. Why does the internet have to so complicated?

Quote: Why does the internet have to so complicated?

what fun would it be if it wasnt?

the hardest part is finding work

Quote: Originally posted by R0B
the hardest part is finding work

Unfortunatley for me it is not! We haven't had to do any marketing for ourselves in over a year now, all our new clients have been reccommended by existing clients and our existing clients just keep coming back for more! I will be luck if I get Christmas Day off with all the work I've got to do plus all the stuff I'm trying to do personally! Not complaining though

Quote: Originally posted by mjames
The hardest part, IMO, is managing the business and promotion and marketing. It annoys me how so many people jump on the bandwagon of building sites, mastering PHP, etc., yet they leave out the most important of them all. Afterall, what good is a web site if you have no marketing or promotion skills to attract visitors?

I myself also think that is this the hardest aspect of being a Webmaster.

Quote: Originally posted by R0B
the hardest part is finding work

i agree totally...

people these days... some just drive u round the bend and down

Personally i have to say its the clients that bug me... always trying to move the goalposts... changing the brief half way through the project. Its really hard to tell them that you cant build a complete ecommerce application with the *exact* functionality they require within the £500 budget you initially discussed.

Then theres the clients that expect to get a complete website, shopping cart, forum, marketing and number one position on every search engine for £100. They really get to me cos they dont make me feel like its worth what i'm charging even though they want 100's of hours of development time!

Quote: Originally posted by andy206uk
Then theres the clients that expect to get a complete website, shopping cart, forum, marketing and number one position on every search engine for £100

You mean you charge more than that for the complete package??

... and then u get those people who like the "fancy stuff" like scrolling marquess and odd javascripts and no matter how hard u explain they won't "sell" they insist on them

...not like that's ever happened to me before

How many sites do a 'professional-webmaster' usually handle ?

It seems like a lot of work load to keep the content up-to-date and satisfy your customers.

It really depends on what type of site they are. I have loads of clients who's site change once in a blue moon when a price changes or perhaps they have a change in product but that's it. Another site changes every week with photos from the nightclub taken each weekend but that takes up an hour at the very most each week. The only other things we are constantly working on are our clients sites that we do the search engine marketing work with and they can be changed very regularly.

Isn't there are scripts out there so that you can allow your clients to change the 'price',

photos shouldn't be too hard to change too, you could just give them a web form to upload the pics.

Or is that asking too much on the client ? Are you still getting paid for the updates ?

I guess the most difficult part of this industry is if your client feel like they can do it themselves (or ask his cousin to do it for him), why do they have to pay ?

A lot of my client struggle to send emails! Not one of my clients has ever thought they could do it themselves, I don't know if that makes me lucky or not!!

For the weekly changes they pay us a set amount a month by standing order and for the others we charge an hourly rate and charge them accordingly for the amount of time it takes me to do the changes.

Quote: ... and then u get those people who like the "fancy stuff" like scrolling marquess and odd javascripts

Well, there are some sites out there that have a scrolling news column, and that usually is nice. Or if there is a special being promoted, then that would be useful.

I am currently wanting to learn coldfusion, because if you have a database of items (such as products with prices), you can set it up so there is an administration page where the client can log in and manually choose which item she wants a price change on, or a content change on, make the change, and then update it automatically.

Or you could learn PHP

It is much easier and simply to perl. And most webhosting support PHP as well.

It is hard to understand why people will have difficult time to JUST send email. Maybe you should 'combine' your web design package with 2 hours of computer lesson.

It'd be more like 2 years computer tuition with some of them and generally if they are new to the internet/email I do give them basic training as long as they are close enough for me to go and see them!

Yeah, that's why it would be nice if you could be 'THE COMPUTER GUY' for them.

They will not only find you to do webmaster related issues but always computer help like buying a computer and stuff. HEY! one stop service, that's what all web master should offer.

We have actually got a guy who is local to us that does the actual computer related stuff and if any of our clients require assistance with PC problems or they want new PCs or upgrades we send him round to see them, so we kind of do supply everything needed.

Almost all of my clients send me content in Word format -- fully and obscenely laid out with bold, italics, colours if I'm really unlucky.

Even using a CMS, I still have to do the basic markup (and purging of Word or Publisher coding).

At some point, SOMEONE has to deal with the markup, and usually it's me. There aren't sophisticated enough CMSs out there to do the work. And if there were, I'm not sure it would be profitable. I'm where the buck stops.

It depends on whether it's new sites, new content in existing sites, product entry and updating (that really should be through a back end admin section or it's just bonkers to deal with).

so, i guess u'll never know with clients aye? they differ like snowflakes

I think the hardest part of *any* webmasters job is keeping up-to-date on the contant changes that are made by the search engines and directorys.

One day any of us could have a #1 listing on Google and, the following month we could be confined to the 10,000 listing just because Google updated its monthly algorythm.

Of course, traffic from the search engines isnt everything but, it counts for a lot in terms of actual $$$ made from any individual site.

Regards,

Lee

That is a hard part if you conciously work on that! Especially with Google's ever changing state of flux it seems to have at the moment

Yes i agree!

Unfortunately though, Google is the one thing i can pretty much do with as i like and manage to get #1 listings...lol

Some would call it a blessing, i however call it a curse as people are always asking me how i manage it time after time, the truth is, i design my site to be relevant to the content on the site. There are no tricks involved as far as i am concerned, there are people who spend all their waking day trying to get the #1 spot in the SE's and i really do pity them especially when they can see that my site turns up above them for the same keywords..lol

I guess it also has a lot to do with the sites that i link to and that link me in return, i tend to go for sites of a similar nature to mine, resources ect, and often it benefits the both of us.

Regards,

Lee