Blog.lifesupporters.com

I gotta tell ya that being the webmaster of Lifesupporters.com is prolly one of the most fulfilling endeavors I've experienced in my 11 years online. I've either staffed at some level and/or membered on countless other websites and to this day I've yet to see a site like ours rival the genuine feeling of warmth and caring that our forums have.

Lifesupporters is now nearing our 4th year online and as satisfying as it is to run this place I have to admit, it does come at a cost.

I remember when we first entered the www. in July 2004 and how simple it was to webmaster Lifesupporters. Back then we were a small site with a handful of members that pretty much spammed each other back and forth. Of course we're not an 00bersite now by any means but suffice to say the days of clowning around have pretty much come and gone for me. I no longer treat the forums as my own cartoon strip where I can drop my pants and act like a n00b because it's no longer 3 or 4 people thinking I'm an idiot, it's thousands. Sure I clown around now and again but goofing off in a forum environment that is meant to help people is not a recipe for success. Simply put, what would possibly make someone want to open up on serious issues if the webmaster is running around with no pants on and throwing peanuts at the party goers?

Of course being more serious on the surface is only a small percentage of what a webmaster must do to keep his/her site moving forward. If you want to attract visitors you need to make your site stand out from the millions online. The best way to do so is to structure everything in the interests of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and publish as much unique content as you can. This may sound simple but in reality unless your some gifted well-versed genius it literally takes thousands of hours writing, editing, publishing, re-writing, re-editing and re-publishing to find what works best for your site.

This too wouldn't be such an issue if you didn't have to worry about the countless other issues waiting to spring up such as webserver hardware failure, botspam, database corruption, and so on and so forth. I know I'm only 4 years older than when I first put Lifesupporters online but I do feel as if I've aged 10 years or more.

Of course not all is bad news, in fact there is hope if you ever experience webmaster stress or webmaster burn out; discuss it with your staff and/or members. Regardless of how you feel it's your audience that truly gives you the best insight as to how things are going.

I must admit that I was terrified to share my feelings at this level with the members and now the benefit of hindsight clearly demonstrates how silly a notion it was. I think if you are experiencing webmaster stress you should be honest with yourself about it and take a step back for a while. There's nothing worse than a labor of love going from labor of like to labor of loath, believe me I was there.

...remember, you may be a webmaster but you are a webmaster second and only human first.

For those interested in the discussion that sparked this blog entry, please see "Falling Short of my Goal" in our "Suggestion Box" Forum.