In today’s digital world, most every company has a website. In total, there are over a billion public facing websites, and many times more within the private networks of schools, corporations, and government agencies. The one thing that they all have in common is that they rely on a massive field of technology experts to keep them secure and running at peak efficiency.
These experts are known as website administrators, and without them, the internet as we know it could not exist. They’re responsible for everything from security patches to speed optimization. In short, if it has to do with a website, they’ll have their fingerprints all over it.
The sheer number of websites online today also makes website administrators some of the most in-demand technology professionals in the world. They can be found working for organizations both large and small, and even as independent consultants who pick and choose their own clients.
However, when average website administrators are just getting started, they’ll often take on a junior role in an existing support organization.
To figure out if this is a career path you might be interested in, we’ve prepared a guide on how to become a junior website administrator. We’ll examine what junior website administrators do, the skills they depend on to succeed, and the places they work.
What Is a Junior Website Administrator?
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Junior website administrators are vital members of almost every IT support organization in the world. They work under the supervision of senior administrators, but otherwise, carry out the same major job functions. Those functions often include these tasks.
- Website maintenance
- Website backups
- Code and interface updates
- Website security analyses
- Website security upgrades
- Code and hosting optimizations
- Monitoring of site analytics and statistics
- Performing and managing search engine optimization (SEO)
- Database maintenance
Since the technology involved in modern websites is so broad, so too is the list of things that junior website administrators are responsible for. In some situations, they may be tasked with designing and building sites and pages from scratch or with handling everyday content updates. This is particularly common for those working in smaller organizations, which may lack an on-staff web designer to handle these tasks.
Today, one of the most vital tasks that junior website administrators spend their time on is tending to the overall security of the websites. With cyberattacks increasing every year, this is the greatest single challenge junior website administrators face.
In fact, it’s fair to say that they are on the front lines in the battle to keep the internet safe, secure, and free from data breaches. It’s tough, necessary work and is likely to remain their greatest focus for the foreseeable future.
Where Junior Website Administrators Work
As one might expect, junior website administrators may be found working just about everywhere. They frequently have staff positions within medium to large businesses and are common fixtures in most corporations. They also may be found working for large web hosting providers who depend on them to provide support and services to their customers.
Another place where it is common to find junior website administrators is within web design and other creative agencies. In such positions, they may spend their days managing client websites and carrying out routine content updates on request.
They may also function as consultants in the creative process, helping designers to figure out the technical requirements to make their designs come to life.
The Skills Needed to Become a Junior Website Administrator
With such a broad range of responsibilities, junior website administrators must have a varied and deep skillset to succeed. Those skills encompass everything from the more technical aspects of their role to the human side of the equation, which is just as important.
The required skills include critical thinking, programming skills, active listening skills, attention to detail, time management skills, systems analysis skills, reading comprehension, and language skills.
Critical Thinking
At its core, the job of a junior website administrator is all about finding solutions to problems. Just as is the case in most technical fields, however, there is rarely only one solution to a given problem.
That’s why junior website administrators require keen critical thinking skills to succeed in their work. They are constantly called upon to apply these skills to evaluate their approaches and possible solutions to the problems they face, to make sure that the most effective and appropriate one is put into action.
Programming Skills
Everything junior website administrators must do revolves around programming. They need it to build and maintain websites, create web-based applications, and maintain databases. Although there are more programming languages used online than we can list here, these are the most common ones that a junior website administrator should be familiar with.
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Angular
- Python
- Java
- SQL
Active Listening Skills
Junior website administrators spend a good portion of their time working with other stakeholders to set priorities and goals for the websites they manage. To do their jobs well, they need active listening skills to absorb and understand what others have to say about the work they need to do. Without them, complex changes and alterations to a website can end up done incorrectly, or worse, result in the introduction of dangerous security vulnerabilities.
Attention to Detail
In addition to active listening skills, a junior website administrator must be detail oriented. Websites and web applications are complicated and involve multiple technologies working together to provide the needed functionality.
A single line of code out of place or a misconfigured database connection can bring down an entire website. For that reason, details matter more to junior website administrators than they do to people in most other positions, and they must be adept at managing them.
Time Management Skills
Becoming a junior website administrators means wearing many hats and taking on a variety of tasks every day on the job. The demands on their time are great, and so they need excellent time management skills to get everything done on time, on budget, and with no errors.
They also must know how to adapt when emergencies happen and adjust their schedules accordingly to accommodate them. As any working junior website administrator can tell you, there are always fires to put out, and they tend to happen at the least convenient times.
Systems Analysis Skills
Since the internet is such a sprawling, multifaceted network, no single entity can control it. For junior website administrators, this means having to maintain websites under ever changing conditions.
To do it, they need to have a high degree of skill in systems analysis. This allows them to understand how the websites they manage should function under optimal conditions and how they can keep them working if things go wrong.
This is a skill that junior website administrators use throughout the planning, maintenance, and update processes involved in their websites, and is a must-have for success.
Reading Comprehension and Language Skills
To be effective, junior website administrators must have excellent reading comprehension and language skills. These skills help them to be effective communicators, as well as managers, of the content of the websites in their portfolio. In practice, this also means understanding the needs of the audience that a website is intended to serve, to keep it readable and at an appropriate level of linguistic complexity.
Multitalented Technology Professionals
It should be obvious that becoming a junior website administrators is a challenging and multifaceted one. That makes sense given the fact that they’re the people most directly responsible for managing and maintaining the websites we’ve all come to depend on.
It’s a great career for anyone who loves technology and can’t resist a challenge. Being the kind of person who gets a thrill out of understanding how things work helps, as well.
The bottom line is pursuing a career as a junior website administrator takes talent, skill, and a considerable breadth of knowledge. With so many websites in the world and so many more coming online every day, there may never be a shortage of opportunities to put those skills to the test.
Did learning about how to become a junior website administrator interest you? The Web Application Design and Development program transforms beginning computer coding students into entry-level, full-stack web developers. The Web Application Design and Development program focuses on the main programming languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, SQL, and PHP.
Career Services at Hunter Business School
Hunter Business School Career Services staff members help students jumpstart stimulating and gratifying careers in the web design field by helping the prospective employee make the transition to the workplace as quickly and easily as possible.
Placement services include job interviewing skills, résumé preparation, cover and thank you letter writing, job internships, and career counseling and support. Graduates are always welcome back to Hunter for assistance from the Career Services department.
Contact us today to find out more about how to become a junior website administrator on Long Island.