There are no specific steps or courses for becoming a webmaster. Moreover steps for becoming a successful webmaster are also not mentioned in any tutorial or ebooks. Yes there are some basic things that you must know but then in long run the rest depends on the learning, research and implementation of ideas that you have.
Lets start with basic things. Some might agree some won’t but I think a webmaster should have some knowledge of programming and servers. I know you can get freelancers and hire programmers or webmaster service providers to do your work but yet, I feel you should have the knowledge of this things otherwise you will come across more hurdles then anyone who has the knowledge of this things.
So for the basic things you should at least know What is a server, what is domain name, what is HTML and/or what is scripting, You should also know some basic retouching or designing (needed sometimes)
Assuming most of the people would like to go for PHP scripting lets also assume you will be dealing with Apache server and to make SEO friendly URL’s you might want to read some tutorials on .htaccess.
Changing domain name-servers, Installing scripts, modifying/CHMOD permissions on files and folders, FTP [Can use filezilla for FTP purposes] the ID and Passwords are the ones you use for your control panel login or you can create FTP users from the server control panel. The default port for FTP is 21.
You also need to keep your imagination going wild in every possible direction it can go. After that compare the imaginative ideas with the real life stuff and see if it is beneficial enough or not.
First of all you will need to choose a good domain name for your website.
Choosing a good script for your projects is also an important step, If you are a coder then you can always code out your own script. I personally hate all the webmasters scripts that are available to anyone for some bucks because using it doesn’t gives any uniqueness to my sites. I am only using 2 ready made scripts, one is MyBB for one forum and another is this WordPress for this blog itself.
If your budget is limited and you have to go for a readymade or a turnkey script then you should tweak it a bit to make it unique and content in it should always be 100% unique. After that comes the part of managing and marketing the site. As well as building up more content and getting more traffic for your site.
You can take out some fixed hours out of your schedule and do the things that are needed or you can here also hire some webmaster services providers.
Marketing your site if it is a forum or a blog or a website you will need to do some SEO and marketing for it, in order to get traffic to your site(s).
You can refer to Complete Onpage SEO and Offpage SEO Part 1.
Forum promotions are explained over here: Promoting a Forum
Some common webmaster acronyms are mentioned here for your reference.
If you are using a dedicated server or you want to use SSH then you can refer to SSH commands reference guide.
If you are going to promote affiliate programs for monetizing your site then you can refer to Affiliate marketing techniques and Affiliate marketing techniques Part 2
My own story of being and becoming a webmaster is at Webmastering as a profession.
Some resources a webmaster must checkout are:
- Digital Point Forum
- Namepros
- Nameslot
- World Wide Web Consortium
- Google Webmaster Central