Distinction between Serverfault and Webmasters

Question

I've been browsing serverfault and webmasters, and it seems that the intent of the webmasters is to deal mainly with creating and maintaining webpages and content, and serving it. The Programmers forum seems for any type of coding, and serverfault is intended more for maintaining physical servers, their code, and networking. I do feel that serverfault gets more attention and in turn has more questions relating to PHP and a lot of other stuff I feel belongs on either webmasters or programmers. I'm also probably guilty of this, but does anyone else see this? I mean, I could be crazy.

Answer 1

You are not wrong, there is overlap and blurred lines between many Stack Exchange sites.

I suspect I could find some overlap in questions that might be somewhat on-topic on Webmasters that could be asked on many other sites includingdrupal, wordpress, sharepoint, stackoverflow, serverfault, database admins, writers, it security, graphic design, interface design, programmers, ubuntu, linux/unix, video production.

There is also lots of webmaster things we don't want on serverfault.

Serverfault was the second site, right after stackoverflow, followed by Superuser. Yes, serverfault has more questions, and shows up in Google more often. But people should take the time to find the best place to ask your question, not just pick the first place were it won't be immediately flagged as off-topic.

See the very first point under the 'when you ask' section of How To Ask Questions The Smart Way HOWTO.

Choose your forum carefully

Hackers Experts blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order to try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.

Answer 2

Webmasters is about managing and running websites. ServerFault is for those who manage and run hardware and software systems, including server hardware, networking, and web/database server software.

WM focuses at a higher level than SF; though they do sometimes intersect, they have generally different focus.

Answer 3

For a definitive answer, check out this meta question here:

• If it's something YOU can do without getting your host involved, then YES it belongs (on webmasters)
• If it's something YOU can't do and need to get your host involved, then NO it's not for pro webmasters and should be closed or migrated (to Server Fault)