Soon after finishing a project and solving all the website related issues, the clients might want you to carry on with your services and work for them as their webmaster for few hours a week. You might consider this job a bit troublesome, but by using some effective tools and tactics you can easily handle this job. So, if you have been offered something similar, then the below mentioned information can be very useful for you.
Defining a Webmaster
Before we go further and discuss the tools, it is important to know what exactly a webmaster is, and what are his/her roles and assignments. Another name associated can be a website administrator and has a duty of maintaining the web pages. In addition to this, he or she is also accountable for the maintenance of hardware, updating software, responding to the comments given by the visitors, analyzing the flow of traffic and many of them are also responsible for making design changes as well.
Moreover, the skills required to be an expert webmaster include basic HTML , which is important for small code issues. Although, it is greatly dependent on the type of website to be handled, however, he must also be aware of JavaScript concepts, Perl, PHP along with various other programming languages. Configuring Internet Information Services (IIS) and Apache HTTP Servers are some additional skills required.
And for websites that are operating on a larger scale usually employ more than one webmasters in order to get the affairs handled effectively. There are several people who are performing the job of a webmaster as a freelancer. Although, it might appear as a simple job presently, but the truth is, that it has requirements like meeting deadlines, following guidelines and dealing with different types of challenges.
Effective Webmaster Tools
So to make your life a little easier as a webmaster we are going to discuss some useful tools which can come handy.
Uptime Robot
This tool is especially useful when your website is expected to experience a lowdown period. It indicates key points where it is operating on a below the standard rate. Since, it would be unfair to expect the webmaster to always remain online, so, when he is absent, such tools are effective in determining the point when the website is going down.
There are two advantages of uptime robot – firstly, the tool is free of charge and does not require any subscription fees prior to its use and the secondly it will deliver alerts to you through emails, which is great to keep tract f everything.
Webmaster Tools by Google
Google has made repeated efforts to provide every single tool that can be useful for the webmaster, as their aim is to cover each and every aspect of the industry. Although, this service is used on a wider network and is spread on almost all over the world, however, these tools are considered as the best tool that have been developed by Google.
The only requirement to acquire this tool is to have a Google account. Google webmaster tool provide all the important details and information. And this Information will cover every aspect such as search queries, keywords through which the website can be searched on Google index, referrals links to the website, diagnosing malware issues, list of crawl errors, +1 metrics, and website performing statistics along with various other features.
Keyword Tool by Google
A while ago, Google launched an effective tool for webmasters under the name of Keyword tool. The basis of this tool is very helpful and quite useful as through this you can find the keywords that are helpful for SEO purposes and through which you can also attract traffic towards your website. And the best part is you can analyze all the information about each keyword.
Teambox
For bigger sites where webmasters performed their duties from a similar work place and in the form of a teams. A webmaster tends to work alone only when he is providing services to a small website. So, if your work requirement is to create collaboration with other webmasters, then the utility of Teambox will be beneficial.
This is also free of cost, however; there are some premium plans as well which obviously includes more improved and enhanced features. It enables the webmaster to create tasks and then share it with his team, uploading files, developing effective communication processes, developing pages so as to share information on different aspects and so on.
Freemind
This utility tool is good for mind mapping activities. Through this tool, the webmaster can express their thoughts and ideas and represent it to the general public in a very effective as well as easy form. This tool is also charge-free.
Smush.it
In case you want to work on the technical aspect of the job, this tool developed by Yahoo, is the best one to consider. The characteristics of this tool are to reduce the overall size of the images that is being used on the websites. Moreover, it also has the benefit of having some optimization features as it reduces the image size without providing any harm to its quality.
Make Use of RemembertheMilk
This user friendly tool for the webmasters can also be referred to as a collaboration tool. It enables you to create to-do lists and the same can be accessed from anyplace onto your desktop, laptop or smartphones. Advanced level uses of the tool includes creating multiple lists, levels of priority, tagging, keyboard shortcuts, reminders and various other such issues.
The job of a webmaster is a very challenging job and by making use of the above mentioned tools, you cannot only enhance your skills but you can also manage your workflow effectively.
