Majin Planet

A Webmasters Life

Ok I had the feel to write this, in fact to let you know up front I have no idea what this article is about. The basic idea I guess is this is more so just a list of things I got thru everyday as it comes to the most simple tasks that I have to do each day. I know there are millions on millions of people who go online everyday. The one thing that webmaster must do, is how the hell do you get any of them to visit you out of the billions of sites there are? Well not really giving you an answer to this because there is no answer

Running a web site is hard, in fact some times I question my reasons on why I am running this site. Every day I go thru all the things that I need to or at least think that I need to do. I find it funny that everyday just about I talk to people online, on message boards, chat rooms, and such and I always say that I don’t care about hits or do I care how much traffic I get. The truth is I do care. Everyday just about I look at my levels. If traffic seems to be going up I look at what I added the day before and try and add more of it, if traffic goes down then I look at what I did and maybe that’s not what people want. The point is that even know I may some times say I don’t care about traffic, I would have to say that I’m a lair. That fact is there is no web with out traffic, from the biggest sites like Yahoo to the small unknown sites like us, traffic matters almost as much as the content. Its hard, one one had you can have shit for content and you get all the traffic in the world. I have seen it people and then you can have great content and get no traffic and then you can be in the middle which is where I would label us at and get well odd traffic. One min we seem to be doing very well and then others its like a ghost town here.

At one point I was looking at traffic reports, reading articles, checking and checking on traffic and nothing on the site gone done. Yet I was getting loads of traffic. Why? I know why because I put so much of my time into getting that traffic. But I never once did I see anyone of them come back. Maybe a few of them, but not many. If I had put that much into the content, who knows right. Funny how this like things we call traffic is just 1% of the whole picture. You have no idea on what it takes, some think they do, many could careless. Some know what I’m talking about and funny how I bet many of you will find yourself’s in my shoes laughing your ass off because, Hell that Me!

Ok we have a little laugh, down to business here. Running a web site is like a business. Even know you want to do what you want to do and well from time to time you get lazy and don’t want to do anything. Trust me I get there a lot. Its just like work, you know those days when you just don’t want to go to work? Same thing, some will say, this is my job. Which may be so for many cases here. Everyday I wake up, maybe breakfast, do my daily jobs for the day. I get on the computer maybe around 2pm sometime around 3pm. I’ll work for hours on end. Some times I get a fire ball up my ass and I’ll be up at 4am and be on the computer until like 1am. Reading, researching, building sections, writing all kinds of stuff.

Building the site is again a small part of it. Once you made a site you have to worry about hosting. Now for me I am lucky, I don’t have to worry about my hosting, how much space I have or my brand width. I did at one time, but as of late I have found that its a waste of time. Because as a site grows it using space as your traffic grows you use more brand width and the more content you have the more of both you use. To think that I would spend 2 or 3 hours looking at this stuff is crazy now that I think about it. I try to limit my computer time these days as well I know I wont be doing this forever. God that would be crazy, its not like I’m the next yahoo or Lycos or anything so if anything I would say there is maybe 2 more years left for me and this site. I know that’s a bit off topic here but I really have push myself to the limits and beyond and working on a web site has turn from just something I did after school for a few hours to a job!

Its funny that I seem to do more work back then as it came to content on the site then now. Why is this you wonder. Different times maybe? NO, its simple that’s all I did. All the stuff I do now as it comes to building sections of content I did in a few hours then. I would take all day think about it. Well I was in school and doing other stuff but in the back of my mind I would be like ok when I get home I’m doing that DBZ site or that movie section. And I did it. Today its a different story, it can take days to get a section out. I will go thru things that I would never had time to do back in the old days. Why? Mostly because as I got older and got more time to work on things, I took that time to become a better webmaster.

I would check out books, buy books go online and read articles on being a webmasters. Steps I need to do, rules, and styles. Many of them I did right off the bad with out even knowing it. Some took some time to pick up. Today I find it harder to go back to my old ways then anything. I’ve try to just say ok lets do this but I always get a feeling in the back of my mind to do something else or just a feeling that well maybe tomorrow. Before you know it tomorrow is here and your face with the same problem. Yep you guest it, I say the same thing and before you know it tomorrow never comes.

Music was something all the books said to do. Music can make you do things that you would other less not do. I can think of doing a section or something and not have the will to do it. But a good song can get you into it. Music can make you do things and can help in the creative process that normally would be hard to do. Really have you ever been at your computer deck in your room alone, dead quite with only the sound of the keys while you type away either writing content or maybe coding or what not? Can you really build a site doing that? If you can and can prove it, then my hat is off to you. I have tested this. For me it can’t be done. I have taken 3 hours and try to write one article, just random bull dead quite. No music no TV, nothing. Find that it took me almost 3 hours to write 1 page of stuff. The next day I did the same thing again but this time I listen to random music. I almost wrote 5 times as much and in fact the article was really good.

But as you know, well the webmasters know this is only half of the game. We haven’t even hit over time yet. While creating of the site is well easy, only hard because about 90% of the problems we create ourselves. But what of this other 50%? Well its the after effects of the site. So the site is ready to post online, you have your hosting, everything is uploaded. Well no traffic for the first day. Oh yeah no one knows but you, so you go out to do what? Get traffic oh yeah back to that. OK so you visit a few boards, post up your site URL. Maybe even you join a few boards that normally you wouldn’t have, just to get your url out huh? Yeah we know you do it. Trust me I’ve even done it. Today message boards are the easiest way to gain traffic. First off the worst that will happen is your post moves off the fist page. But then you have a profile with a link field for what? A web site! Oh yeah and maybe you may post there a little bit just so it doesn’t look like you only came there for traffic. Yeah I know, it happens but can you blame us? No you can not. YOu then go out to search engines getting listed, you talk to your friends, saying visit my site! YOu go into chat rooms asking for visitors. But once you get traffic is when the world falls down on you and you really feel the hurt.

Fans!! Oh yes you may say that its a good thing. However it can be a nightmare. Its sad but 80% of all the comments, emails,a nd other forms of feedback you get will be bad. Even if you have the best dam site in the world. Your site can be better then Yahoo, you know it and the visitors know it. However you still get nothing but bitching comments, spam and hate mail. Why? Because people love bitching about things. This is the first phase of running a site that many fail at. How do you know you failed? Well lets see. The first one would be the site closed down. About 90% of the times its not the webmasters/Owners fault. Shit happens. But trust me when a web site seem to be doing very well and then closes out of the blue with your standard, we are having hosting issues or I have no time to work.. Its bull shit. Webmasters get hate mail up the ass, I get about 1,000 emails a day. Just about all of it is hate mail. On a good day my email box will fill up. You wonder why I have so many different email address and its just me? Now you know, it breaks it up.

About 80% of the time is good hate mail. Some times they are bitching because your missing something or that you may have over look something or who knows what. A lot of times it can be very helpful to your site. About 2 months ago I got a run of emails from people saying my html code was bad, I need to go back to the drawing board. I’m not up to standards, etc. The fact was I was, maybe a error here and there. Nothing big. So I went and got an approve from W3C.org and you know what, I haven’t hear one comment about my code since then. So in that case the emails of hate I got help me out. As now I am more up to the standard then ever. It even improve my rating scale as it came to me trying to review other sites. In return many of them have thank me for my option of their sites. So just because you get hated on about things, you must look at it as a good thing. Its not always bad. It can be very helpful

Spammers, we all hate them. The fact that many sites close when they become targeted by spammers. They have open comment sections, open forums, open shout boxes and other free post what you want stuff. Well sorry but this is the number one target of spammers. When I see a site hit by a spammer and they close down or remove what ever was getting spam it shows that they really don’t care for what they had. Spammers are suckers for open posting. How to fight them? Remove the open posting or do some research and fix it. As you can see here, we have what many sites have but they have it open. We where even spam a long time ago. It was bad and it was hard to clean up. But I and my visitors made thru it and we haven’t had a problem since then and I know we wont for a long time.

Hackers I would say is the number one reason for webmasters giving up. I mean with the number of hate mail, comments, spammers, and then you start getting hacked some webmasters will think, “Fuck why should I put up with this? Trust me when I say that I have been down that road. I have seen sites close the doors and leave message saying they closed before they get hacked to much. I can tell you that 90% of hackers who hack web sites have no real skills and are just being silly and stupid. Trust me, real and I do mean real hackers do not waste their time hacking some site they they could care less of. They go for the real stuff, like banks, governments sites and stuff. The fact that real hackers are about at maybe 5% of the total people out there who say they are hackers. Many hackers make small hack programs and well put them out there that people get and use against other sites. DOS attacks and other things of this nature is what I am talking about.

The different form a real hacker and a n00b as its called in the internet world is a real hacker if they hack you, first off feel honor as you have something they want or maybe you did something to them. A n00b hacker will call you out first, they will tell you they will hack you (give you a warning), some times they even tell you when and how they are going to hack you. Some times they want you to bow down to their greatness and become a follower so that you and your site is. About 80% of all webmasters are from the age of 14 to 25 years of age. And I can tell you that about 90% of the targeted webmasters are from 14 to 17 years of age. What are you going to do against a hacker? Most of the time your getting hosting for free. So you either run after getting hacked or you fall to what ever they want form you. Once you stand up to them and show them that you don’t give a rats ass about them they more or less leave you alone and move on.

Very few webmasters make it. I mean with bitching visitors, spammers, hackers and who knows what else is going on in your life and life of a webmasters can be well a bitch. Some people have the gift. They can make a site, people love it, they do well and hell they become Yahoo, Google and Lycos. Some never make it and at the end they find they wasted their time and money and many feel that all they did was for nothing. I mean you don’t see people talking about Jim’s Super Big Cool Web site that was on GeoCities from 1999 to 2001 do you? No you don’t, hell many can remember sites like mine which has been open for years now. Its not a bad thing and its not a good thing. Its just in the middle like everything else.

There will be days when the world is in your hand and whatever you do will be great and everyone will know your name. Then there will be days when everyone hates you and your nothing but a few pages of text on the world wild web. Its the times when no one cares about you, when things are hard, things are bad that make great webmasters, its a test of your character its a test of who you are. If you can’t hack it, it doesn’t mean your a bad person. Its just means what it means to you. Like I said there is no secret to being that Super Webmasters that everyone loves or to have a site everyone would kill to have. If you wake up and want to build a site greater then Yahoo, then let nothing stop you. Don’t cheat, work hard. Some times it may seem for nothing, but one day it will pay off for you. If you wake up and want to just hang out with friends, go to the movies, or even sleep all day or something. Do it, because all work and no play shows in your work. I hope you enjoy this article and I hope that it help you understand the hardships we webmasters go thru and I know your life’s aren’t any better, lets save that for another day my friend, for now I will leave you with this one and I look forward to talking your head off later. Peace out.