Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

It's Thursday and here in my office most of us are already hanging out for the weekend.

Yes it's been that sort of week. My partner has just come back from a training session he was running for some new clients and by the whimpering sounds he was making as he walked in the door I gather that it was a rather traumatic and frustrating experience ... and maybe he should have expected it because we already knew that these people were not computer savvy at all.

As for me ... well I just got off the phone with another client who was complaining that he wasn't getting his email and a computer tech that we sent out to try and fix his problem told him ... without actually checking ... that the problem was at our server. However, the problem wasn't there at all ... oh no it wasn't our problem at all.

It seems that yet another computer tech ... someone who was employed by our client and who has now disappeared into the mist ... set up one or more Hotmail accounts for our client ... had Hotmail download the emails from the server into those accounts ... and then had our client's email program download the emails from Hotmail.

Of course when you make things complicated problems arise and in this case, for some unknown reason Hotmail isn't downloading the emails from the server anymore and no one knows the access information for the Hotmail account. And somehow that's all our fault.

There was a time when, after a session like I just had with that client, I'd have an overwhelming urge to throw things around the office ... yell and rant and carry on about the lack of intelligence that some people have. I could have probably carried on for a good 20 minutes or more after that phone conversation ... but I've changed.

These days I still get a little angry when I encounter utter stupidity or injustice but how can my ranting and carrying on do anything positive for the situation? It doesn't really make me feel any better ... it does nothing good for my blood pressure ... it doesn't help me get more work done ... and it certainly doesn't help me fix the problem that got me all stirred up.

And today, as I wandered around the Web, I began to see a number of people complaining and ranting about things ... especially the way Google is pushing for even bigger profits and the way that hunger for more money is hurting little people and small businesses.

I've seen posts complaining about how Google's approach to mobile websites is at complete odds with the way it treats Adwords advertisers and the way it now displays and charges for Adwords ads on mobile devices.

Then there was the post from someone who, it seems, has only just discovered the real effect that a patent Google was awarded around the middle of last year could have on websites. It's the one that suggests that if Google finds that you've made some changes to your website then it's going to drop your site down in the rankings till Google feels it can trust you once again.

And there's a whole lot more about Google that we webmasters could go on ranting about ... heck there's a lot of ranting we could do about TGP and link list owners who expect us to jump through a lot of hoops just so we can get our sites listed. But what's the point?

Why let yourself get all bent out of shape over anything that you are never going to be able to change? Why let yourself get distracted from your work by something or someone who will never pay any attention to what you're saying?

Sure ... people power can change things and in our form of democracy things do change when enough people get angry about something but the Web isn't a democracy. The Web ... at least the part of it that we're involved in ... is controlled by companies and people who don't have to listen to webmasters ... either collectively or individually.

We ... even as a group ... are nothing to those who can make us conform to their rules because they control the things we need to succeed ... so why waste your time and energy getting worked about what they do? Isn't it better for us to simply take a deep breath and keep on working instead of wasting time ranting and carrying on about something we can't change?

That's certainly the way it has become for us when we encounter clients who haven't got a clue and are too thick to learn. We smile ... we laugh about it ... we try to get the message across to them ... and if we don't succeed we just take a deep breath and go on making money.

So if you're trying to decide whether your should rant or not just take a deep breath and think about the dollars you could be making instead of wasting your time.