So we’ve been over every aspect of being a webmaster and then some. Now
I’m sure we haven’t covered every single facet of being a webmaster,
but we’ve covered a good majority of it and from the information we covered
anyone can start to become a webmaster. There are plenty of skills and techniques
that can still be learned and plenty that we didn’t go over, but the best
part about being a webmaster is learning things like this on your own.

The last thing I’d like to cover are a few things that I’ve pick
up over the years that will help better round some of us that are starting webmasters
or may have been doing it for quite some time. We’ve talked about these
types of things before but have never really gone to much in-depth with them
and that’s what I’d like to do with the conclusion to these series
of articles on webmastering.

Fist and foremost I’d like to go over actually building a web site from
start to finish. I’m not talking about the steps involved I’m speaking
about the planning process. Many webmasters believe they can build a site from
start to finish and learn as they go and build as they go, which in many cases
is how most of us have started and isn’t necessarily a bad way to get
started. But for a site to become successful a webmaster needs to do three things.

Planning

The planning stage should be the most time consuming stage, other then actually
writing content. Planning a good web site can take a long time and should in
many cases. The planning stage is the most important part of any website as
it can determine weather or not it succeeds or fails.

When planning a site its good start with what the site will be able and then
plan around that. Determine what type of content will be displayed and how it’s
going to be displayed. Writing all this down is a good way to keep up with the
planning process.

Not that we’ve determined what the site will be about, we can then start
to build the content and finish up the planning stage. We should plan what types
of content are going to be present on the site, and then decide how much and
which kind should be where. Remember that we shouldn’t try to have a site
cover more then one topic or area as it will be hard for the webmaster to keep
up with the site.

Sites that are specific to one subject or topic normally do better then those
that try to cover more then one thing. Those types of sites normally have a
small amount of information about each subject or topic and users can’t
really find everything they are looking for in one spot. Whereas if a site focuses
on just one topic or subject they can cover a lot more information about that
topic and thus the user would be able to find what they are looking for, in
most cases that is.

Once we’ve completed all of the planning we can then move onto content
building, which is another very important point I’d like to make. When
building a successful website, all of the planning and content should be completed
before any design, domain name, hosting account or even name has been decided
upon. Just like before, this may not always hold true. It really depends on
the type of site and/or the type of content that will be contained within the
site.

Content Building

When we start building content for our sites we need to focus on good clean
content and try to stay away from filler content until the end. When I speak
about filler content, I’m speaking about things like forums, links, downloads
and so on. Those types of content are considered filler content and really do
not make up a site, unless the site is geared around nothing but that.

Download.com – Nothing but downloads.

WebHostingForum.com – Nothing
but forums.

We get the idea from the above web sites. Those types of sites are just fine
and work because they focus on one major thing and then build from there. These
types of sites do very well as they are a mass of one type of information in
one area for users to have at their finger tip’s. This makes most visitors
happy as they can normally find exactly what they are looking for or something
very close.

So now that we know to focus on one major subject or topic and we also know
that we shouldn’t use too much filler content, we can actually start building
content for the site. In the case of Webmaster Stop we started to write tutorials,
help files and so on before the site was even started.

Once we had a good amount of content developed, enough to make a small site,
we opened up the site and then continued to build from there. Now Webmaster
Stop has hundreds of articles and tutorials and is continually updated and has
a good amount of visitors that visit the site on a daily basis.

So we need to make sure that we have a good amount of “real” content
before we even decide to start the site up. A good rule of thumb that I’ve
found to work really well is when developing a site layout, build all of the
content for the site first and then build the design of the site around the
content. Doing so will normally work much better then building the site, then
trying to make all the content fit into the site.

Conclusion

Now that we know the basic steps of building a site we can not begin our own
projects and build our first, second or third site and for some even more then
that. Being a webmaster is very rewarding in many different ways and can eventually
turn into something profitable and even a full time job. It has for me and I
will always enjoy being a webmaster and continually growing and developing my
skills as a webmaster.

Being a webmaster is one of those things that will never really end and you
can never learn everything there is to know about being a webmaster. Being a
webmaster is one of those things for people that are hungry for knowledge and
information. Just remember to plan a web site out before actually building it
and get all the content completed before a design, layout or anything structural
is completed and build that around the content and not the other way around,
this will insure everything works and fits together nicely.