Let’s face it being a good system administrator is no simple task, you firstly need the correct mindset, skills and knowledge to provide the best support you can to your customers within rapid time frames. The calls will not stop coming, that is guaranteed. However the way which you deal with them and the speed with which you can figure out the problem and give some insight and resolution matters. I have compiled a short list of what I deem to be essential Firefox Add-ons for the System Administrator.
Firebug
This tools is mostly used for one thing by a System Administrator who is not concerned with any design elements of a website, to see how fast the website loads on the client. Some times clients will call and say that somethign is wrong with the server because their website is taking 25 seconds to load, well this little tool will show you each element being called from the webpage and how long it is taking to load. To use it, click on the icon that looks like a bug in the lower-right hand of your browser and click on All then click on Net.
So if some images are loading in 8ms and others are missing and holding up for a few seconds, or if there is some horrible JS doing something nasty, you’ll pretty much nail it down and point out to them that the server is not slow but it is infact their poorly designed website which just has way too much client-side elements loading. I’ve used this in the past and my clients simply loved me, they saw the screenshots I sent them and passed them on to their designers!
