Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webmaster

Google Site + Site Map = ?!@#<%^

doorsfan — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:07:04 -0800

With a personal domain how do you submit a sitemap in webmaster tools for a google site? It's probably staring me right in the face but I can't look at my monitor any longer!!!

I have a google site with a domain I've purchased from godaddy and for the life of me cannot figure out how to add the sitemap to google webmaster tools.

-My domain has been added to the site and it is accessible.
-I've enabled google analytics and have pasted the Google Webmaster Tools meta tag verification.
-I have created my webmaster account and when logged in it displays my godaddy domain.

The next step in webmaster tools should be to go to the sitemaps page and to submit the sitemap - What do I enter here?

All the "help" files for google sites say to enter: http://sites.google.com/site/(your site)/system/feeds/sitemap but that is not my domain. I've tried a few combinations but no luck.

With a personal domain how do you submit a sitemap for a public google site?

How do HUGE TGPs add their galleries? Automatically or Manually?

sprockett — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:57:58 -0800

How do those huge adult TGP's add their new galleries daily? There are like hundreds of different genres on the front page itself, and most of the genres have new galleries daily. Is it done automatically or manually done? I mean like check out perversius (NSFW!) So like perversius has TONS of new galleries for each category, and not only that, they have a tagging system going on. Ie. If you click on TEEN, u can also further narrow down the search to "TEEN + BUSTY" by further clicking the related tags.

I am doubting they manually add their galleries, but if its automatically done, who does the categorizing for them? Its surprisingly accurate!

Thanks guys :)

Can I use Google Webmaster Tools if I don't own the site?

anticlock — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:07:08 -0800

Google Webmaster Tools question. Can I use it if I don't own the site? Can I use google webmaster tools if I don't own the site or have admin privileges but have a "personal" directory folder, with permission controls? For example:

www.thesite.edu/myfolder/

In other words, can I put the google verification file into "myfolder" and get results on the access of the files using webmaster tools?

How to impartially choose a qualified Webmaster?

LolaGeek — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:33:58 -0800

An organization I'm in needs to fill the newly created position of Webmaster. How should we determine if a candidate is qualified to hold this position? And any advice on making an impartial selection if the only person among those making the decision with any web experience, is also a candidate? An organization I'm a member of recently established the position of Webmaster. Previously, the Secretary of the organization was the default webmaster, but as the group has grown, and with the increasing importance of the internet, it's clear that this needs to be its own position, filled by someone with the appropriate skills.

The Board of this organization plans conduct meetings with candidates before making a selection. However, besides the current Secretary (who does happen to have web design experience and has been managing the web site for the past few years, and also plans to apply for the Webmaster position), none of the Board members have any experience or understanding about what this job really entails.

Two questions:
1) What should be the qualifications of the person to hold this position? How should they demonstrate that they have at least the minimum skills needed to do this job, which includes maintaining a small web site, an e-mail list, and any other web presence of the organization?
2) Any suggestions on how the Secretary can remain impartial while using their expertise to help the rest of the board come to a decision? (They already plan to abstain from the final vote.)

PS: I am the Secretary.

Redirecting users by IP in Apache

Oktober — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:16:56 -0800

How do I redirect incoming website visitors to an external site by IP address? I'm the general sysadmin here and don't do much web stuff other than simple content updating, but I think I'm on the right track with adding this bit of mod_rewrite code to the end of the httpd.conf file...

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^12\.345\.678\.9$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/index.php$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://test.foo.com/$1 [R]

Any ideas why this isn't working?

(apache 1.3.33 on OS X)

how is proper load-balancing done these days?

helios — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:54:44 -0800

What are large websites using these days to load-balance their traffic? I have been using round-robin DNS on my site which has five front-end web servers. I am beginning to realize why this is not a good idea - first of all, the first IP address in the round-robin chain seems to get a disproportionately high amount of traffic, and secondly, if one of the servers goes down, then 1/5 of my users can't access the site until I either fix the problem or change the DNS and allow it to re-propagate.

I have realized that many high-volume sites that I visit have a DNS entry that only resolves to a single IP address. So what are they doing differently?

I'm assuming that they are using a "load balancing" device, but is this just a reverse proxy server running Squid or Apache, which would itself be as vulnerable to hardware faults as any other server?

Or are there specific high-availability "load balancing" devices (like something Cisco would make) which automatically act as the front-end for all servers, taking a server out of the loop if it stops responding and/or notifying me by mail? If so, where can I find these devices?

How can I know exactly what my webserver is doing?

fcain — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:00:43 -0800

I've got a web server under a fairly heavy load of web traffic. What techniques can I use to find the bottlenecks? I run a dedicated webserver for a website that gets about 600,000 pageviews a month. Most of the time it's fine, but there are times when it chokes on the traffic and becomes unaccessible.

What are some tools, logs, or applications I can run that can help me diagnose where the weak points are. I already know how to use "top", and tail -f on the log file to watch a stream of entries accumulating, but that's not enough.

Is it a rogue spider crawling through my directories, gobbling all my bandwidth? Is the hard drive not able to serve up the files fast enough? Is there some kind of hacking attempt going on? Have I misconfigured one little setting in my Apache httpd.conf file that's turning away users? Is there a stupid infinite redirect somewhere?

I want to be able to figure out exactly what's going on for the server when it's having a slowdown to diagnose the problem.

Any suggestions?

The server is running Linux CentOS 4.4. I'm comfortable compiling and installing software, running advanced commands, stitching together perl code, etc.

What web books do you recommend?

Catch — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:46:09 -0800

Wanted: 'WAI for dummkopfs'. Please recommend your favourite dead tree books on web design, usability, accessibility - or anything you wish the average corporate webmaster knew. I've been asked by a friend who is web-master at a small(ish) .govt Ministry to recommend books for the web-team's reference shelf.

This is a sudden and magical "end-of-financial-term-fairy" opportunity to grab some really useful resources.

Areas of interest include web accessibility (currently trying to teach others in the organisation WHY this is important), CSS and content management.

But any recommendations for truly sterling books on web-related topics will be welcome - I'll make him bookmark this thread for future reference.

So: books that you've read and referred to so often that they are dog-eared, books that made a lightbulb go off in your head, books that gave you great lines to fling into arguments. Please.

What's the best legal setup for a local chorale?

tejasa — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:03:00 -0800

We are a upstate NY local chorale, 10 years old now, reorganizing with a new director and we are not sure of the best legal setup. We want to have a board with officers so the chorus members can become more involved in management. Currently there is just a tax ID#. Should we incorporate as a non-profit and get 501(c)(3) status? Just incorporate? We want to try and get grants to buy some risers, for example, and don't know if non-profit status would be required. But we are also thinking of raising money by paid singing gigs (as opposed to our regular community concerts where people donate to support us) and we don't know if we could still do that as a non-profit. We would like to know what other groups have done, and would be grateful for any advice.

Protecting mah bandwidth

calhound — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:12:11 -0800

Website admin question: I want to put up a website with about 10000+ charts. I don't mind people copying images, but how can I protect against a site sucker barging in, scooping them up, and killing my bandwidth? I wish I could generate a bunch of static HTML pages with simple IMG tags, but I'm guessing this isn't possible. What might PHP have to offer for protecting my content from site suckers?

Moderated wiki, Full-time, part-time, or easy?

hazyjane — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:26:17 -0800

Is there any wiki software that will allow a moderator to approve edits before they are posted? If so, how difficult would it be to set up and maintain? I've recently started volunteering with a group of teachers and environmental activist types who want to make a wiki on which students around the world can post about local environmental issues. We have a webmaster who made a (not very good, in my opinion) basic site for us on a volunteer basis. But now that it's a question of setting up a wiki, the webmaster has gotten a little weird.

She's saying that if she makes a wiki, this would be a full-time job for her to set up and maintain, and she would therefore like to be paid on a full-time basis for the forseeable future. Now, I'm not AT ALL opposed to doing some fundraising and hiring a webmaster to help with the site, but this statement of hers seems ridiculous. First of all, if we're going to hire someone, I'd like it to be someone good (this webmaster doesn't know how to set up wikis and is resistant to learning). Secondly, I highly, highly doubt it would be a full-time permanent job (so far we have fewer than one hundred students who will be signing up to contribute). When I balked at what she was saying, the webmaster said to me "well, have you ever set up a web site?" I said yes. "With a database behind it?" I said no. "Oh, I see......."

So now, I'm in charge of researching how to make a wiki and determining what kind of resources we will need. I'm not terribly knowledgeable about setting up sites, but I've read through the many questions on askme about setting up a wiki, and it really doesn't seem that tough. I think I'll recommend PhpWiki (we have server space with Php), and it looks like basically we just need to unzip it in our web server, fill in some details in the .ini file, and customize the look and feel. But I need to know, before I squash the webmaster's hopes of getting full-time wages out of this - is it really as easy as that?

Is there any way that edits could be sent to a moderator for approval before they are automatically posted? I looked through the faq on Phpwiki and didn't see any mention of this feature, and on MediaWiki it was very clear that this cannot be done. Are there any other wikis where it could be done? If so, I could see how the moderation could be a full-time job (but we could share this task among several volunteers), but not the technical part alone.

Communicationfilter. Worst webmaster ever? Or perhaps that should be Worst. Webmaster. Ever.

deliriouscool — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 07:38:05 -0800

Help me control my blood pressure while getting my (young, surprisingly inexperienced) coworker to respond to my requests to improve our company's website. Last year, we hired a new staff member to manage our nonprofit's website and e-communications. He's very nice and has decent intentions, but his primary web qualification seems to be that he's 24, so he's "in touch with what the younger generation wants". He designs with tables and isn't familiar with validation, PHP, .htaccess, etc. - our redesign, while it improved our site nominally, left a trail of broken links and missing pages that I would be ashamed of if it were in my own webspace. Because I am not a big blabbermouth about my own blog, no one in my office knows that I might know more than he does about website structure and putting together pages.

I'm trying to be as neutral as possible in my requests: when I ask him to make changes, I'm certainly not saying "You chose a stupid name for my document when you put it on the website - please rename it to something which actually describes what it is (you could, for instance, use the *document title* as a guide)." I say things like "Hey, would you mind setting up a redirect this week so that people looking for page X will find it in its new location?" He says "yes" or "I'll get to it," and then it doesn't happen for weeks if at all.

I recognize that I can't ask him to do things my way, but I'm frustrated that I have to keep asking for stuff, changes I think should be easy one-offs. Our boss recognizes that my co-worker is sometimes slow to respond, but is generally happy with the website, because he's not super web-savvy.

Should I go to my boss and say "You know, I need your advice, because I've asked our web expert for a few things that would make the website easier to use, and he says "sure" then nothing happens." Should I keep hoping my co-worker will grow some organizational/time management skills? How can I encourage that? Or should I just let it go? Letting go advice appreciated, if that's your recommendation...

How to correct and/or prevent a spamming problem?

anonpeon — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 11:34:23 -0800

Spamhaus says my server is a spammer. How do I check to see if this is true and if it is, how do I stop it? Baring that, how can I prevent spamming in the future? We're running a dedicated server, with Apache 2.0.

I am NOT Unix savy. I have this position as webmaster by default, so please don't get too techy with me. Yes, I can learn stuff and if you want to point me to educational sources, that's fine.

Yes, I have root access and we're using plesk 6.0 as a control panel, qmail as the email server. The server is hosted by Aplus.net and is not in our physical care.

The good news is that in the midst of writing this post, Aplus.net informed us that the spamming machine, which wasn't ours, has been stopped, we're not in trouble and that they've sent the delist request to Spamhous.

But it has still exposed a weakness in webmaster-kungfu. What do I need to learn and where?

IE doesn't display gifs, but FireFox and Safari have no problem.

Wild_Eep — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 09:35:07 -0800

WebDevFilter: Why do some gifs GIFs *not* appear in Windows/IE, but do appear in Win/FireFox Mac/Safari and Mac/FireFox? Specific example inside. The site I'm working on seems to appear just fine in 3 browsers, but not in IE for Windows. I get white boxes with red x's in them instead of the gifs I expect.

This output was given to me from an export from Quark XPress, which produced the CSS. I'm a CSS newbie (but I understand the concepts).

Google returns a boatload of results, mostly relating to making changes to the registry and deleting temporary files. Before I do anything that drastic, could I have another set of eyes look over my code?

Nameserver problem

mudpuppie — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 16:59:55 -0800

Help! My webmaster's out of town and I don't know how to do this.... I just changed our nameservers to go to a new hosting service.

How/where do I check to find out when they're actually "resolved" to the new host?

I'm sure I got the syntax wrong. Basically I need to know when our site is pointing to the new server so I can set up email accounts, but have no clue about how to do that.

(The new host is dreamhost, if that helps.)

Thanks much!

Need a new work title.

strangeleftydoublethink — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 14:55:49 -0800

I need a new title! Currently, my title is Webmaster. Sure, I mostly do web stuff, but I also do videos occasionally, as well as general communications consulting for different folks within the company. Some key words might include: online, communications, manager (?), etc. I work in the communications department of an engineering firm.

Online Website Development Courses

dash_slot- — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 12:00:49 -0800

Which online courses would you recommend for a beginner in writing website templates, and how long would it take to progress to 'intermediate' level? What are the essential technologies I should become aware of?
Assume basic html skills, some Blogger tinkering, and a desire to learn quickly - I'm hoping to experiment with something on my webspace which I can show to a panel of interviewers in about a month. I'm awaiting redeployment out of front-line social services [for health reasons] in the UK. I have already decided to take classes in either networking or programming 101, but now have seen a totally desirable job on my employers website - and am reconsidering the skills I need. Never having done a course in website management, I need some advice on getting up to speed!

The job title is: Web content manager, and the criteria required follows: -
Essential: Microsoft Office; Experience of writing for the web, demonstrating best practice for optimising content and images; Experience of working with colleagues to improve business processes using the web; Good working knowledge of HTML; Experience of managing website content - including an understanding of navigation systems, creating templates and basic forms, maintaining existing content and working with colleagues to develop; Knowledge of how to assess and improve accessibility and usability of websites.

Desirable: Knowledge of ICT software packages for template creation; Experience of using a content management system.

Now, I don't want to underestimate the skills you guys have, nor overestimate my capacity - at my advanced age (",) - to pick it up and have a rough & ready grasp before a possible interview, 1st week of October. But I do think I have a chance.

Any tips, people?
Thanks.

We-based Advertising Rates

cup — Tue, 11 May 2004 09:49:51 -0800

Are there 'standard' rates for text and banner advertisements? Are there any generally accepted pricing guidelines? Is there a formula a webmaster can use to determine how much they should charge for banners or text ads? What about exclusivity? (More Inside) One of my websites (a relatively new one) is starting to take off. Although the traffic is low, it is being linked to from popular sites, traffic is steadily increasing and search engine position is improving. It is highly focused.

A company (which makes a product much desired by my highly focused audience) has contacted me for advertising rates and they want exclusive banners (i.e. I would no longer be able to accept any banner advertising from other companies in the same line of business).

I have no idea what to charge them and Google didn't turn anything up. Does anyone know of any pricing standards, guidelines or general rules regarding banner advertising or text ads? Anyone have any experience in this area? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

P.S. I would prefer to charge per month rather than per impression or click-through. Is that generally accepted or will that be a problem?

P.P.S. Sorry but I will not provide a link to the website in this thread, my profile or via e-mail out of respect for the community policy regarding self-linking. Thank you for understanding. :)