Life of a Webmaster: Managing Multiple Websites or Domains

Hello there fellow webmasters. I know how frustrating and tiring can be to manage multiple websites or domain names or client accounts so I decided to outline the most important parts of process. Remember, you are not alone. There are thousands of webmasters like you and me struggling to stay on top of their website maintenance and management. Some of the most important task for a webmaster: 1. Website statistics:
You have to frequently check webpage statistics and take action depending on the statistics result. For example if the number of visitors decreased last month then you have to do something about it. Find out what went wrong, maybe. Also you have to often check bandwidth and space usage for every domain/website account. You may also want to check subdomains stats/usage too. 2. Login Details Maintenance:
Having a lot of websites/domains means that you have to deal with a lot of usernames and passwords. It’s not a good idea to stick with one password for all your websites or accounts. I hope you understand that. Keeping good track of all your website’s login details also helps when you want to access those websites via FTP. Setting FTP access and logging in to the servers can be frustrating. 3. Taking Backups:
If your web server does not support automatic back ups then it’s your responsibility to take copies of your website’s data. This is especially important when you have running databases (e.g. when you have a forum or portal). Taking frequent back ups can also help when you want to change servers. 4. Email Management:
Managing multiple domains and websites means a lot of email addresses. How do you deal with that? The smartest way to go through it, is by using email forwarding. I hope your server supports this feature since it is a common one. The idea is to redirect all email-messages from one e-mail address to another. That way, you can have a main email address and multiple other -redirect- email addresses. All messages will be redirected to your main email address. 5. Client Management:
A lot of webmasters, apart from owing websites, they also offer webhosting services to people. Everyone is tempted to make some extra cash this way. I only host websites for people i personally know. Anyway, if you have some clients you have to keep track of their domain and webhosting accounts. Here are some issues that may arise:
- Domain expiry issues
- Account bandwidth limit reached issue
- Name server management issues
- Client support issues (online, phone etc)
- Finances and more.. It takes a lot of time and effort to deal with all that! 6. Website/Domain Management Software:
If you use WHM/CPanel control panels you have a lot of control over your accounts. I’ve tried lots of control panels and they all offer more or less the same level of control but I stick to WHM/CPanel. Now, there’s software based on these control panels that helps you automate webmaster tasks and manage multiple websites and accounts even if they reside in different servers. If you search for -Domain Management Software- or -Website Management Software- you’ll get millions of results. This software is supposed to automate your life and streamline your business even further. Webmaster tasks like: - mass nameserver management
- mass account creation
- mass subdomain creation
- multiple FTP uploading
- mass chmod commands ..can be applied to multiple websites on the same time and maintained through one central location. Choosing the right domain/website management software can be tricky. Be careful when messing with that. It depends on your experience level and your way of thinking so choose wisely. You must know what you are doing. For example, you may not have many websites and feel that you don’t need such management software. There are a lot more issues and tasks that a webmaster is responsible for. I just thought of mentioning some of the most important and time consuming tasks for the average webmaster.