TGP Tutorials & Articles

Essential Webmastering Skills

by Andrew of AdultWebmaster101.net

You don't have to hold a degree in computer science to become a webmaster. You do however need to possess or develop at least an intermediate level of computer literacy. These are the minimal skills you'll need to learn to become an adult webmaster:

HTML

HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) is the language in which all web pages are written. Modern web design programs such as Dreamweaver utilize a easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) graphical editing interface that hides the details of HTML code. However, it is still essential that you have a firm grasp of HTML if you want to become a webmaster. Fortunately, HTML is easy to learn. The popular HTML Goodies website is a great place to start.

CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to control the formatting of HTML pages in a much more powerful way than by using HTML alone. If you're just learning HTML, consider CSS optional, at least for now. But eventually, you'll want the design and site management capabilities that CSS offers you. The W3Schools CSS tutorial is a great reference.

Web Hosting

You'll need to become thoroughly familiar with web hosting. Nearly everything you'll need to do with your web hosting account can be handled through the control panel your web host provides. cPanel is a popular control panel that is widely used in the web hosting industry, and the one you'll most likely use.

Among other things, you'll need to learn how to upload your website using FTP, manage your domains, set up databases, interpret your web server logs, use .htaccess files, change permissions and install scripts. When you eventually move to a dedicated server, you'll need to learn some basic server administration as well. Otherwise, you can rent a managed server or hire someone to do server administration tasks for you.

Photo and Video Editing

Porn is all about the visual, so creating and editing graphics, photos and videos is important. Even if you're only promoting sponsor content, you'll need to crop, resize, compress and adjust images. If you're working with video, you'll need to create sample clips or edit the video that you've shot.

If you're building galleries and free sites to promote sponsor content, graphic design skills are not important, though they can be useful. A nice design is more important for pay sites, but still not absolutely critical, especially for small niche sites.