IT Managers who are also webmasters

I've never worked for a large company. Well, I take that back - Ingram Micro is a large company but when I worked for them back in the day they were very small. Most of my career has been in a small IT shop where I am the only computer guy or one of a small group of two or three or four computer guys.

I like that arrangement because I get to wear a lot of hats. One of those hats is the webmaster. I wouldn't say that I'm a really good graphic artist. In fact, I would say that graphic design is not one of my creative strengths. Don't get me wrong - I know good design when I see it. I just haven't been able to produce it myself on a consistent basis.

That's why when it came time for a new Web site for my employer, I didn't mind when we decided to farm it out to an outside agency. Of course, I and my associate computer guy will end up maintaining it in Dreamweaver just like we do our current Web site. The new site looks cool with all the Flash animation. You would think I would have learned Flash by now.

Well, I know for those who use it every day that Flash is simple stuff. But most of my day is spent putting out fires and helping the employees use their computers. I'm amazed sometimes at the simple stuff that my co-workers don't know about Windows or how files are stored on servers or how they can access their email from off-site. You know - basic stuff.

See, that's my point. What's basic stuff to me, a certified network engineer, is a mysterious world to my co-workers who only use a computer to communicate. Likewise, the world of graphic design is a mysterious world to me, a man of many hats. It takes a lot of patience to create all those little Flash illustrations. I know because I've tied.

So even though I am the webmaster, don't ask me to create you an award-winning Web site. I'll maintain it for you once it gets designed, but my web work is basic stuff. I don't feel bad about that because I add so much value to the company in all the other areas in which I am an expert. I love what I do and appreciate the variety - including working with outside designers.

What do you think? Can an IT guy be an exceptional webmaster as well as a great engineer?

Is Rev Control really necessary in a small company?

We don't do much software development at my company. In fact, I would have to say that we don't do any at all. We use off-the-shelf packages that have been slightly customized by the VAR that sold them to us. When we need something modified, we contact them to update the SQL code or an occasional Crystal Report. I can do both, but I prefer to let the reseller take care of it in case there are dependencies that I might not know about.

Our web site is about the only thing we modify on a regular basis ourselves. We didn't design it but we sure do maintain it. Some weeks there are dozens of changes. Some weeks there are none. Most of the changes are content related - new aircraft listed for sale, new employment opportunities, an occasional aircraft added to our charter fleet - stuff like that. There are two of us that work on the website - me and the General Manager's son, who I am training.

When a user requests a change to the website they usually send us an email with the new content. If they try to do a verbal I insist they put in in writing so there are no assumptions or misunderstandings. Usually they send the changes to me and I decide if I will do the work or assign it to my associate. We have one user who insists on sending the request to both of us. I guess he figures his chances are better that it will get the attention he wants that way.

Unfortunately, this can cause some problems. I have trained my assistant to be responsive to requests like this since we are a service department and don't produce revenue. In other words, the employees are our customers. I work from home several days a week so I am rarely in the office at the same time as my co-worker. He is part-time so I schedule my time on-site to be when he is not there. This provides the best coverage for support issues.

I made a change to one section of the website last week and my associate made a change to the same area this week. Unfortunately, we duplicated effort - his post was added to mine and we ended up with the same entry twice with slightly different wording and layout. He was just being responsive to the user request and didn't realize that I had already done so. I suppose we could say it is the user's fault for sending the request to both of us but I would never do that.

My point is that even in a small organization where there are only two administrators, it helps to have some sort of revision control system in place, even if it's only a central log that is checked before updates are made. I can only imagine how complex it must get in a large enterprise with a few or even a dozen programmers working on the same website. Of course an alternative would be to assign different parts of the website to each of us but we just aren't that big.