The top ten (almost) ways to tell you just hired a webmaster who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

15. All pages are numbers, not descriptive
14. Site takes longer than 4 seconds to load on a 3mbps cable modem
13. Opening music with no way to turn off
12. All images are odd letters and numbers
11. Uses keyword cramming to try to boost your ratings (but only hurting you)
10. Uses Frontpage
9. I asked how he liked Java, he said with cream
8. He doesn’t have a single style sheet applied
7. You ask him if he does Apache, and he says his wife is a Blackfoot
6. He asks for the user name and password to get into a domain name that is administrated by another company.
(He wants the main account password for all domains)
5. He steers you towards $7.00 per month hosting
4. You say you’re sure he knows how domain transfers work, and he says yes “I’ve done DSN changes before”
3. He asks for root access to the entire machine
2. He copies images knowing it’s a copyright infringment

And #1 is: He uses domain ‘framing’

If you just hired a guy that did more than 3 of the top ten ways to tell your webmaster is an amateur, congratulations! You’ve just hired an idiot who will represent your company in a filthy, dishonest way, and will stop at nothing to ruin your image!

I must note that all of these have been uttered to me at some point in my 15 years of doing web design/management. One individual does take the cake as saying or implying greater than half of these, making him truly a greenhorn of monster proportions. Good luck! I’d much rather wait 2 months for a diagnosis from Mayo Clinic than a 2 day diagnosis from the intern, just my own opinion, deeply rooted in this type of amateurish webmastering.