A business owner, often times, will not have the knowledge of building a website from the ground up, save being able to make edits. Even though this happens often, that doesn’t mean that the webmaster (the individual you deemed the manager of all things technical of your site) has inexhaustible leverage over you and the fate of your website. A relationship between a webmaster and business owner can be a dynamic, interesting, yet sometimes frustrating experience. But it is possible to make it as advantageous as possible.
You may expect your hosting company to fulfill the role of the webmaster, though that may prove fruitless as many times they won’t be able to answer your specific question themselves and the tech guys just know things closely related to hosting. This translates to transferring domains, downtime help, troubleshooting your website database, and getting rolling on a content management system. In our experience starting off in the world of web development, we’ve had almost a 0% success rate of the hosting company providing the absolute solution to the problem*
*Problems include basically anything and everything, but these are some common issues they may have difficulties addressing.
- Adding/removing people from emails
- How malware was injected into your root
- Your WP functions.php
- Folders that are 4 subdirectories deep from your root
- Blog feeds breaking
- Shopping carts breaking
- And again, anything and everything
Talking it out with hosting will normally get you on the right track, but if that track requires editing tables in mySQL or editing lines of PHP, this could lead to aggravation and the problem continually repeating.
There isn’t a reason to panic, and there isn’t a reason to treat your webmaster like a demigod. If they become condescending or aggravated with your requests, or charge exorbitant amounts of money, or (MANY TIMES) both, don’t feel stuck. Just because they’ve been managing your website or built it from scratch doesn’t mean they are the only ones that can handle it. Web languages are universal, plugins to websites are ubiquitous, and other people are capable of taking your site. Sometimes a new webmaster may even get you need done quicker, more efficiently, and with better customer service and genuine care.
Will you always be able to communicate with webmasters about how you want your site updated? Probably – perhaps not eloquently, but in a day where you can share screens, take screenshots and edit them, or just hop on the phone or Skype, expectations can be managed.
Need a new webmaster? Maybe a few updates to your site you still really like? Enlist the help of Market My Market. We’re experts in web development and optimization and we’re eager to help you today. Let us help you build your dream website in an efficient, stress-free way. Contact our experts at (800) 954-9441 to learn more about us and receive a free service quote.
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