A webmaster is a person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. The title may refer to web architects, web developers, site authors, website administrators, website owners, website coordinators, or website publishers. The duties of a webmaster may include: ensuring that the web servers, hardware and software are operating correctly, designing the website, generating and revising web pages, A/B testing, replying to user comments, and examining traffic through the site. Webmasters of commercial websites may also need to be familiar with e-commerce software.[1]
Due to the RFC 822 requirement for establishing a "postmaster" email address for the single point of contact for the email administrator of a domain, the "webmaster" address and title were unofficially adopted by analogy for the website administrator. RFC 2142 turned this common practice into a standard.
Webmasters may be generalists with HTML expertise who manage most or all aspects of web operations. Depending on the nature of the websites they manage, webmasters may be required to know scripting languages such as ColdFusion, JavaScript, JSP, .NET, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. They may also need to know how to configure web servers such as Apache and be a server administrator. Most server roles, however, would be overseen by an IT Administrator.
Core responsibilities of the webmaster may include the regulation and management of access rights of different users of a website or content management system, the appearance and setting up website navigation. Content placement can be part of a webmaster's numerous duties, though content creation may not be.
See also
- Chief web officer
- Database administrator
- Postmaster (computing)
- Web design
References
- ^ Oz, Effy (2008), Management Information Systems, Cengage Learning, pp. 29, ISBN 978-1-4239-0178-5