When you create a presence on the web, you can't just pull the parts out of a box, glue it together with the language of your choice, publish, and then stand back and admire it.

It's more like going to war.  You want to be well armed, and have a battle plan, but when things get gritty, you have to be able to morph with the circumstances, improvise, and be willing try out the most cutting edge whiz kid state of the art weaponry when the opportunity presents itself.

Whatever you do, you don't want to kill bystanders.  You need to know enough about server technology to stay out of the way of the core of things, but if you need to make some adjustments, you need to have that knowledge as part of your kit.

And you must always remember that the web is a living thing that changes moment to moment, and you need to support that.  Sometimes you have to tear down what you built, and build it again with newer stuff.  More often, you have to adapt new technologies to legacy structures.

You have to be willing to take calculated risks, and have an escape plan ready.

Cowboy coding can save a lot of time, but you better have a backup.

The environment on the web is usually pretty unruly, littered with the code left behind by myriad other developers, some brilliant, and some foolish, and some downright idiotic.  But this is how it is in the wild.  It's not like working in the Cathedral, where everything is sanitary and orderly.

Sometimes you have the opportunity to create something pristine.  That's great, as long as you build in a way to let your creation evolve.

Because it is evolve or die.