TL;DR: I wrote a book. Strategic Web Management: First Steps for the Accidental Web Manager is out now, and WebManagers.com has been rebuilt around it, with free worksheets, a weekly podcast, and a daily blog for anyone who ended up in charge of a website without being trained for it. If that describes you or someone at your business, this post tells you where everything lives and what is free.
Key points
The book is 18 chapters and 360 pages, built for owners, office managers, and volunteers, not developers. Paperback and ebook. 26 toolkits: checklists, templates, and worksheets included in the Print Resource Kit (as PDF downloads).
WebManagers.com now opens on the book, with a free account that unlocks every worksheet and checklist from the book and the podcast.
The Web Managers Podcast walks the book one chapter per episode, about twenty minutes each.
The blog publishes six days a week: one maintenance habit on Mondays, one web emergency on Tuesdays, one quick win on Saturdays.
IE Web Services is still here for the owners who would rather have a local partner run it. The two sites are built to work together.
How this started
Since 2005 I have taken the same phone call from Beaumont to Redlands. Someone at a business or a nonprofit was told "you're good with computers, right?" and the next morning they owned the website, the domain name, the email, and a dozen logins nobody remembered creating. No training, no manual, usually a sticky note. Most of them spent a year believing they were unqualified for a job they were already doing.
I kept explaining the same things across the same desk: who actually holds your domain, why the host's backup is not enough, what to do in the first hour after a hack, how to tell a platform problem from a content problem. At some point it was obvious that the explanation deserved to be written down once, properly, so the person who got handed the website could read it before the bad day instead of during it.
That became the book, and the book needed a home that was not a course catalog. So WebManagers.com was rebuilt too.
What is in the book
Strategic Web Management is organized the way the job actually arrives. Part one gets your bearings: what you own, whose name it is registered under, and the one-page file that lets someone else take over if you are out for a month. The middle chapters cover the website itself: domains, hosting, platforms, design and accessibility, maintenance, security, and being found by search engines and the AI tools that now answer questions for your customers. The later chapters move to business email, marketing, analytics, vendors, compliance, and the plan for your first 90 days.
None of it requires writing code. Every chapter ends with something to do: a worksheet, a checklist, or a template, from the Web Account Inventory Workbook in Chapter 2 to the 90-Day Plan at the end. It is available in paperback and ebook.
What is new at WebManagers.com
The old site was a catalog of courses, most of them not yet open. The new one has one front door: the book, and a free account that gives you every companion worksheet without buying anything.
Three things are worth bookmarking:
The free worksheets. Every checklist, scorecard, and template from the book and the podcast, in the Web Managers Portal. Create a free account at webmanagers.com/register and they are yours.
The Web Managers Podcast. One chapter per episode, about twenty minutes, with a myth busted and a quick win under thirty minutes at the end of each. Episodes start with the job nobody applied for and work forward through inventory, domains, hosting, platforms, and security.
The blog. Six posts a week, each one practical. Mondays are a twenty-minute maintenance check. Tuesdays walk through one web emergency, calmly and in order. Saturdays are a quick win you can finish before lunch, and the weekly letter goes out the same morning.
The courses and the Web Emergency Playbook are still there, one click away, for when you want to go deeper.
Why this matters for a Beaumont business
Most of the owners I meet along the Second Street corridor or out on Yucaipa Boulevard are not short on effort. They are short on a clear picture of what they own online and who can get into it. That gap is where the expensive surprises live: the domain that expired on a Saturday because the renewal card was a former employee's, the contact form that stopped delivering months ago, the "web company" that turned out to hold the business's own name.
The book and the site exist so you can close that gap yourself, in an afternoon a week, without becoming technical. That is a good outcome whether or not you ever hire anyone.
Two doors, same founder
Here is how the two sites fit. WebManagers.com teaches you to run your own web presence. IE Web Services runs it with you.
If you read the book and think "I can do this, I just needed the list," wonderful. Keep the worksheets, follow the Monday check, and call us only when something is beyond a Tuesday afternoon.
If you read it and think "I understand it now, and I still do not have the hours," that is what Local Web CARE is for. Every month we handle the four things a small business website needs and rarely gets: Content kept current, Analytics reviewed and acted on, Reviews monitored and answered, and Engagement with the customers already looking for you. We do not just care for your website; we partner with you to care for your customers. Packages and pricing and Google Business Profile management is included in the cycle.
Either way, the goal is the same one the book opens with: you may not have applied for this job, but you can absolutely do it.
Frequently asked questions
What is Strategic Web Management about? It is a field guide for the person who became responsible for an organization's website, domain, email, and online accounts without ever being trained for it. Eighteen chapters walk from finding out what you own, through securing and maintaining it, to a first 90-day plan, with a worksheet or checklist for every chapter.
Do I have to buy the book to use WebManagers.com? No. A free account at webmanagers.com/register gives you every worksheet from the book and the podcast, the weekly letter, and the blog. The book, the Web Emergency Playbook, and the courses are there when you want to go deeper.
How does this relate to IE Web Services? Same founder, two doors. WebManagers.com teaches you to run your own web presence. IE Web Services runs it with you through the monthly Web CARE cycle when you would rather have a local partner handle the content, analytics, reviews, and engagement.
Not sure which door is yours?
Send us a message and we will run a free website check: who holds your domain, whether your backup is real, and whether your contact form still delivers. It takes us about fifteen minutes, there is no pitch attached, and you will know where you stand either way. Happy to check it for you.
IE Web Services serves small businesses in Beaumont, Banning, Calimesa, Yucaipa, Redlands, and surrounding cities, since 2005.
Sources and links: Strategic Web Management: First Steps for the Accidental Web Manager by Bryan C. Mills; WebManagers.com, free account at https://webmanagers.com/register; The Web Managers Podcast, https://webmanagers.com/podcast.