Define Webmaster

Posted by Barb Mosher Sep 6, 2007

When I started writing articles for Suite101 I had to decide where in the navigation they should live. I wasn’t sure about placing them in the Webmaster Resources section just because Webmaster was a term I hadn’t heard for a long time. When a friend of mine saw the section name he scoffed - probably thinking the same thing I did. There are a ton of other names for people who manage web sites and overall web presences today: online producer, web manager, web producer, or marketing manager for the web.

The Webmaster title has been around a long time and it’s meant different things over the years. Initially this person was responsible for the technical aspects of creating and managing a website – the servers, the code, and the graphics. Sometimes they were referred to as the System Administrator. Today their responsibilities have grown to include online marketing, content, e-commerce and more. This has led to the new titles listed above.

If you search for the definition of Webmaster on Google, you get over 500 million entries – which shouldn’t have surprised me but did. There are organizations specifically for Webmaster Certifications. And a lot of sites dedicated to Webmasters.

Maybe Webmasters work for small companies with small websites to maintain and for the larger companies you see the role called web or online producer. The work may be the same, it the amount of it that is different.

So I add my work to Webmaster Resources knowing that people do still acknowledge the role is a valid one and has simply expanded to mean more things. But I still wonder if people who have the Webmaster title feel under-appreciated or under-valued? Do you think the term Web Producer is a better name?