A webmaster’s job never really ends. It starts from the design phase and goes on until, well, it simply goes on. As long as your website is up and running, you will have something to do.
Now, if you are lucky enough to have a team of minions to order around to take care of various parts of your webmaster duties, you will probably spend most of your time with your legs up on your desk. But, if you happen to be just another “mortal” webmaster, you will be slogging it out all on your own. No matter what you do, you will always have 10 more things to do right after it. At times you will think you are losing control, and your mind along with it, but it doesn’t have to be so.
If you work “smarter” you should be able to do an amazing job all by yourself. So, to answer the question “How can a one-man team fix bugs on a website?” here are a few suggestions:
Let Them Help You: Although you have your website up for the pleasure and/or convenience of your visitors, you can be a little sly and actually make them work for you. No matter how efficient you may think you are as a webmaster, you are still human. Therefore, you will err. There will be broken links. There will be spelling mistakes. There will be formatting errors. You just won’t be able to keep track of them all.
But, your readers will. There are plenty of people out there that will love pointing out your failures. Take advantage of them. In a clearly visible spot, put a button or link that says “report dead links” or “let us know if there are any errors” on each page – they’ll be more than happy to oblige.
Use Templates: the beauty of using templates, well, apart from adding to your visitors viewing pleasure, is that a change you make on the master page will immediately be reflected on all the pages on the site. This will save you time in that you won’t need to go to each and every page making changes every time you make enhancements.
Understand Your Code: with so many applications out there that promise to deliver an unbelievable array of solutions to your visitors’ requests, you will be tempted to install more and more of them. If you are not careful two things will eventually happen:
- You will have a site with so many apps on it that it will begin to lag. The second thing that
- When something goes wrong on your site you won’t be able to pinpoint the exact location of the problem.
You will either spend hours troubleshooting everything on your site on a trial and error basis or you will simply have to bring the site down and start re-installing everything from scratch when that fails.
But, if you know your code inside out, you can simply go in through the back and delete the offending lines. You can have your site up as fast as you can publish it.
Install Apps, Tools and Modules: There are many tools out there that can really help your day to day site administration (do not confuse them with the ones mentioned above and that are actually used by your visitors – these will be for you to maintain your site with). Always keep up to date on new apps coming out – for your own sanity.
Keep an Ear to the Ground: Your site’s visitors will not hesitate to write a review about you – especially if you mess up. You can setup alerts on most search engines that will let you know when someone mentions your site’s name. This way, you will know what your users’ experience is.
The good reviews are just for your ego; the bad reviews are the ones you need to focus on. Go through the alerts on a regular basis and in this way you will have an automated feedback system to act immediately upon.
Always Have a Backup Plan: Whenever you visit a webhosting site, one point that they [the hosts] make sure is clearly visible to you is that they have an amazing backup plan. They try to let you know that no matter what happens, they’ve got your “back”. As a webmaster you should always know how fast it will take your site to recover from a total crash; therefore, take note of that information.
And even then, you should have a backup of a backup-plan. Keep a copy of everything with you.
Use Content Management Systems (CMS): if your site has content that is regularly updated (like a news or current affairs site, for example) you might want to consider using a content management system (CMS). You can update your site without the need of a programmer. You can delegate authority to content writers and editors in various time zones and have your site as up-to-date as it will ever be.
Co-ordination, Specialization and Delegation: although you might think that you are alone when it comes to taking responsibility for the running of your website, it doesn’t have to be so. We live in a world where you can hire anyone from across the world to help you perform administrative task. Just because you are letting people do the donkeywork doesn’t mean that you are any less of an admin – in fact, it makes you a smarter one.
Specialization means that you make sure you do what it is that you are good at and reduce the chances of crashing your site by avoiding meddling with stuff you haven’t got a clue about. You might think that hiring someone else to do a job that you consider easy – or one you could do by going through a “…for Dummies” book – is a waste. But you will be saving time, money and a lot of regret down the line by not meddling and hiring someone else to do a job you know nothing about.
Co-ordination is when you work on your site with someone else. This could be on a temporary basis, when something else needs your immediate and undivided attention or on a full-time basis where you get to promote yourself to “supervisor” and just monitor what your new employee does.
Although it might not look like it, with the proper direction, you can train your employee to perform, at least, as well as you.
With delegation you are giving your job to the new guy and promoting yourself to, well, “Big Boss”. You are the leader and purely oversee at least two employees underneath you. This is usually ideal when you own or are responsible for more than one website.
Go on, don’t be afraid to let someone help you – hire a freelancer.
