What is a Webmaster ?
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty,
"which is to be master--that's all."
-- Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland.
There could of course be many variations of answers to this question,
and I do not claim to provide the definitive one. However I have tried
to research this question fully and carefully, and I've taken input
from more authoritive people than myself
and from a number of webmaster job descriptions.
As far as I know all sources have been acknowledged with a link.
In particular, my starting template for this document was
Putting Information onto the Web.
The details vary from one employer to another, but one can
identify a number of typical webmaster attributes and attempt
to construct a 'dictionary definition':
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Webmaster n. person who manages a web; mediator between
web authors and system administrator - ensures that
applicable standards such as
HTML validity
and link liveness are met, optimises the web architecture for
navigability, takes editorial responsibility for the
content, quality and style of the site; finds, creates
and installs tools to create web content and check
consistency; develops and enforces the house style;
liaises with graphic artists; provides first level user support.
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We will look at several rôles related to, or interacting with,
'webmaster'.
The boundaries between these rôles are not sharply defined;
e.g. a webmaster might also sometimes perform authoring or system
administration. In a small company he or she might perform all the
tasks described here; and the rôle may be much more specialized
in a larger company.
We could perhaps identify further rôles such as publisher,
designer, or programmer.
These might be added in a future revision of this document.
You should make a mail alias "webmaster" on the server machine so
that people who have problems with your server can mail you about it
easily. This is similar to the "postmaster" alias for
people who have mail problems with your machine.
-- Tim Berners-Lee,
Etiquette for
information providers.
As a webmaster, you are responsible for the
information base of a particular site or organization.
You will probably want to learn how to organize
large amounts of hypertext,
and perhaps how to create and maintain a
house style.
A good webmaster will possess
- exceptional intelligence;
- enthusiasm for web technology;
- excellent communications skills;
- familiarity with the W3C's work;
- thoroughness and an eye for detail;
- integrity, courtesy and professionalism;
- ability to spell and knowledge of English grammar;
- at least 1 year's full-time web development experience;
- knowledge of at least Perl, UNIX, HTML, CGI, JavaScript.
Typical tasks would involve some of the following:
- Perl programming.
- Maintain the site maps.
- maintenance procedures.
- Maintain any mirror sites.
- Assisting in site promotion.
- Write entries for the Glossary.
- Provide first-level user support.
- Maintain the search engine index.
- HTML validation
to at least 3.2 Cougar.
- Look for problems, suggest improvements, etc.
- Generate the Top 100 page
from the access logs.
- Monitor the error logs and report potential problems.
- Verify that links from the site are live and go to what they claim.
- Check presentation and readability in various browsers on various
platforms.
- editorial responsibility for the content, quality and style of the site,
in collaboration with the area authors on the team.
This will include finding, creating and
installing tools to create web content and check consistency;
development and enforcement of the house style,
including liaison with graphic artists;
and the development of interactive web applications.
The ability to work both
independently and effectively with others is a necessary qualification,
as are good communication and writing skills.
You will need to be more
familiar with the server in order to set up a configuration
that works for your data,
and you will probably want to
learn about various tools that can be useful.
- Quality Assurance
-
- Primary HTML File Maintenance
-
Maintain the home page, as well as a few layers of hypertext files
directly surrounding it. Outer layers of hypertext and other types
of published files should be maintained by the entire community with
the Webmaster as educator and consultant.
- HTML Portability
-
Promote proper use of
Hypertext Markup Language and stay abreast of developing
standards.
Apply
validation services.
- URL Portability
-
Promote proper use of weakly qualified relative
Uniform Resource Locators
so that published files can be ported to various
platforms and directory trees with maximum ease.
Apply
links checkers.
- Look-and-Feel Quality Management
-
Present a consistent visual image on the Web by promoting
uniform fonts, formatting, icons, images, layout techniques, and
modularization, including maintenance of HTML template and image
archives.
- User Support
-
- Frequently Asked Questions
-
Provide the first level of user support by compiling and maintaining
an FAQ with answers and references to further
information.
- Forms Interfacing
-
Assist users who are creating
HTML fill-out forms
in processing responses into HTML output,
and in managing the side effects of such processing.
The Webmaster is not responsible for creating
programs which process forms responses.
- Create Searchable Index
-
If you want to generate a full-text index, you could use
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WebMaster Magazine
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A magazine that examines the momentous business experiment now
unfolding on the World Wide Web. Whether or not, as many predict,
the experiment ends up radically transforming global commerce as we
know it, the Web is a "work in progress" that demands the close
attention and critical scrutiny of all who have a stake in the way
business happens, now and in the future.
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The Job
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Several links to webmaster-related articles, including this page and
the following.
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What IS a Webmaster ?
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There is a fairly wide range of things that Webmasters do,
ranging from systems administration to managing large projects.
The specifics appear to be a function of the scope of the Web effort,
the maturity of the Web within the organization, the type of company,
and the skills of the individuals.
We've received descriptions from Webmasters, which we've posted here,
to give you a sense of what some people are doing.
We've also included some of the job descriptions we've seen on the 'Net.
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What is a Webmaster?
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If you ask a group of webmasters for a job definition,
they will all be different. If you ask them again six
months later, you'll get a completely different set of
answers. Why? "Webmaster" is currently an amorphous title,
describing everything from a beginning programmer to a
management-level marketing professional, depending on whom
you talk to.
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