Date First Published: 10th July 2022
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: Web Development
Difficulty: EasyDifficulty Level: 3/10
Learn more about what a webmaster is in this article.
A webmaster is a person or a group of people that own or maintain a certain website. They are responsible for responding to any questions about the website, creating and updating the content, and monitoring the search performance, such as which search terms bring up the site in the search result and cause people to click. In addition, they have a responsibility to monitor the website traffic, such as how many people have visited the site, which web browser and device is most commonly used to browse the website, how long they spent on there, and more.
Webmasters are usually knowledgeable in HTML, CSS, XML, and programming languages, such as JavaScript and PHP. They are familiar with standards of the web, such as accessibility and compatibility and will use their skills to develop websites that fulfil the needs of visitors, test them in different web browsers, and evaluate them through the W3C to ensure that there are no syntax errors.
For example, some websites may say to report spelling and grammatical errors, incorrect information, and broken links to an email address so that the webmaster can correct them. The default email address is often [email protected] or [email protected].
A female webmaster may be referred to as a webmistress.
The terms 'webmaster' and 'web developer' look similar, but they have different roles. A webmaster refers to a person that owns or maintains a certain website. They may maintain their own website or take care of websites for other companies or individuals. Webmasters that work for companies get paid a wage or a salary. Often, webmasters that work for companies have not developed the website from scratch. A company has just hired them to maintain their website for them.
In small companies with only a few employees, there is often a single webmaster that takes care of the website and performs any website updates.
In large companies, there may be a team of webmasters that have the role of maintaining the overall design of the website, monitoring the website traffic, and updating the content. The webmasters will usually work together to maintain the website. This is because high-traffic sites owned by large companies require much more maintenance as they are visited by much more people around the world and it is important that their website functions as expected.
A web developer has a different responsibility from a webmaster. Web developers build and develop websites for clients or companies and charge them per project or on an hourly basis. They usually do not maintain websites once they have finished developing them. The client or company will usually maintain the website after it has gone live, or they may hire someone to maintain it for them.
The term 'webmaster' has been around since 1993, 4 years after the invention of the World Wide Web and 5 years before Google Search was released in 1998. However, usage of the term 'webmaster' has declined and it is not used as much now. The term 'webmaster' is a bit outdated. Most people now say 'Website owner' or 'Website administrator'. For example, in May 2015, Google renamed its product 'Google Webmaster Tools' to 'Google Search Console' and one of the reasons why was because of the term 'Webmaster' being outdated.
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