So you want to be a Webmaster?
As a Webmaster who has, I hope, "credible" credentials (actual, honest-to-god, paying web-hosting clients; advertisers, my own servers; I even pay for my own bandwidth and write my own code), these are the jobs I do on a regular basis, and the skills I have found valuable.
Learn a server OS inside-out. As long as it's stable, it doesn't really matter whether it is NT, Linux, Windows 2000 or Mac OS X, etc. -- you'll need to become adept at setting security options, access privileges, installing CGI scripts and so on. I run a variety of platforms for various purposes: Mac OS X, Linux, and even an old copy of Windows NT Advanced Server (updated with security patches and service packs, of course). On the Mac OS X and Linux platforms, the Apache web server is the standard, but it's by no means the only choice. The same can be said for IIS on the Windows platform -- it's not the only choice. Windows users can run the Win32 version of Apache, and users of just about any platform can choose from a variety of alternatives, such as Web Crossing, Inc.'s free Web Crossing Express.
Back in Sept. 2000, I tried to upgrade the NT machine to Win2000 Server, and essentially backed off after I found that there a few things I had trouble getting to work smoothly in the new OS. I got it 99% working, but jeez, I spent about 100 hours trying to get Perl scripts to work with Server Side Includes so that an SHTML page could be the default document type, without success. Strangely, I could get it working if HTML was the default and the HTML page used a meta REFRESH tag to *call* the SHTML page, so I know I was very close, but.... I kept getting 405 errors, a problem usually associated with security settings. I was too paranoid to loosen the security settings to allow this to work, and I found the idea of a META tag "forwarding" you to the actual page to clumsy to keep, so I upgraded the RAM on my old server and backtracked.
My NT server has 224 MB of RAM and two 20 GB drives -- one of which is mounted in a "hot swappable" removable tray-- allowing easy backups. The Linux server is a little more robust, with big hard drives configured for RAID 5, a 40GB tape backup, and a CD burner. I have multiple network cards and various hardware firewalls and routers, a wireless bridge (configured as a virtual private network) for some of my office's client computers and so on. Another machine, actually an "always on" client machine running Windows XP, runs a backup DNS server. The Mac acts as a spam filter for the rest of the network. I also have a "staging server" running a bunch of slightly more esoteric stuff: SQL Server, English Query, Index Server, a high-end e-commerce engine from Multiactive called Entice, etc.
I was running a couple of other Linux servers, too, until recently. I examined several varieties of Linux, and had a Red Hat server-based setup running for a while. I found administering a Linux network and using it as an authoring platform too complicated and/or limited, once you start getting into the sophisticated stuff. Although I'm sure there are Linux buffs out there who would disagree, for my purposes, it seemed the tools just weren't very user friendly. This is also an statement that, to some extent, holds some truth when applied to Apache running under Mac OS X. Nevertheless, I have had good results from the Macs running OS X here -- their stability is almost as good as that of my Linux server, which has never crashed in more than two years' of use.
If nothing else, you should be sure to look at your web-page creations on a non-Windows machine (e.g., with Mac and Linux-based browsers). I am often surprised how different a page looks on various platforms.
I have found Perl to be my scripting language of choice, although I also have ASP and Cold Fusion pages on my sites. At this point, I only use Cold Fusion to deliver the Verity97 search engine that is at the heart of The Techno Zone's "basic search" function. While this may seem a waste, considering the relatively high cost of the Cold Fusion Server and Studio software, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the piles of cash I spent learning Cold Fusion and hiring programmers to build the first Cold Fusion-based version of the database engine behind the e-commerce functionality of the stores at The MP3 Zone.com and SecurePurchase.com, respectively. I've since moved to the much more user-friendly eShox platform from Secure.cc for ecommerce services.
You'll also need to develop some way of administering your server remotely, unless you keep the Web Server in your office -- and even then, it can be handy sometimes. I have found VNC to be my favorite, although some people use Windows RAS, pcAnywhere, Timbuktu, or the Windows HTML admin, etc. If you end up running Linux, there's a cool tool from Caldera called Webmin. Using Webmin, you can configure DNS, Samba, NFS, local/remote filesystems and more using your web browser. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures. It's freely available at http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
You are probably already conversant with one or more HTML editors, but you may finds that different tools have different strengths. Currently, I use FrontPage as an editor, and WS_FTP to upload files. I keep several other HTML editors around and they get occasional use, too. I know a lot of people who like DreamWeaver and, despite a couple of useful functions (its "Clean Up MS Word HTML" command being the most useful of the lot!), I find that I am more productive with FrontPage, which tends to automate a few more functions. (automatic URL formatting, for example.) I still do a fair amount of HTML coding by hand, either in a plain text editor or with a non-WYSIWYG Web editor, so this continues to be a useful skill. Generally, I create the overall look of a page with a WYSIWYG editor, then refine it by hand.
I use Photoshop and ImageReady for virtually all the graphics on my sites, unless they are animated, in which case I usually use Flash or LiveMotion. For the preparation of streaming video, I usually use Sonic Foundry's (now discontinued) Stream Anywhere, although the free Windows Media Encoder is just about as good, I must admit.
I use a couple of different Perl scripts to post my news and links at The Techno Zone. Originally, I used one called NewsPro; I've recently updated some sections of the site to use a newer version of the code, now known as Coranto. It offers more features (most notably, a WYSIWYG text entry system) and provides much better performance on sites with a large news database. I use Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) for the Tech Forums. None of these posting systems has ever failed or become corrupted; I consider that the highest praise I can bestow upon them. My server is also running a proxy server (which I will decline to specify, in the interest of security), allowing me to share the high-speed connection (with static IPs, natch) with an essentially unlimited number of other machines. And unlimited they seem to be. Right now, I have seven other computers in the same room, all handling various specialized tasks: firewalls, email, video capture and encoding, audio production, etc.
I no longer run a fancy Web stats program "in the background," as I have found that they eat disk space like crazy. However, when necessary, I run one of the following programs, depending on the platform and application: SurfStats or Microsoft's (now discontinued) Site Server Express. Both are far easier to configure than the free Webalizer favoured by some Unix geeks.
There are a lot of other things to know. Although I have yet to put them to any use, I have been collecting and researching some XML authoring tools, in case they prove useful in the years ahead. I also have a collection of Java applets, a few of which I use on various web pages from time to time. I use Flash and LiveMotion for preparing Flash interfaces and animations for customers who request them, and sparingly on my own pages. In addition to Flash, my websites include Windows Media and RealAudio files, MP3s, MPEGs, Metastream 3D files, JavaScript, CSS, PDF, VRML (another all-but-dead language), etc., etc. To stream files for some of my clients (a list that includes MGM Television), I also run a Windows Media Streaming server.
It's a business. As such, you need to deal with the business side as well as the technological side. This means paperwork and maybe taking a few business courses. If you're not adept at being an accountant, get one (or marry one). The same goes for design. If you're not artistically inclined, don't sabotage your efforts with amateur imagery. Invest in some high-quality stock art and/or hire a designer. It's also a business that can sell a lot of ads, if you do things right. You can't do everything; learn to delegate!
A few of the websites I've designed include:
A list of other sites I host is here: http://thetechnozone.com/BennettArts/GB's_BIO.html
For Further Reading
If you require -- or know anyone who is interested in -- web hosting services, please contact me at Gra...@BennettArts.com.
Post new comment