The Person Who Handles the Web Stuff

The job of webmaster has constantly evolved since the 1990s

- NATHAN KIMPEL

An evolving job description

In the now distant past, “webmaster” was used to refer to an individual who would update and maintain a web site. This individual would also take care of the server, and sometimes the network that users accessed the server through. Webmasters were responsible for ensuring that websites remained functional, user-friendly, visually pleasing, and up-to-date.

A successful webmaster was expected to work well with others and collaborate successfully with managers, designers, writers, and so forth. A well-rounded webmaster would have had excellent technical skills and a good understanding of creative online marketing.

And right there you can see how an initially simple job description began to evolve, with just three words: creative online marketing. Almost right away, webmasters began to accrue duties beyond the scope of behind-the-scenes maintenance and server-side heavy lifting. The importance of having a flair for sales and online imagery started to branch the job and its description.

As these two roles split, so did the servers that serve the content. A lot of people went to an n-tier infrastructure to serve the websites and the front-end/back-end or database and communications tiers were born. A webmaster could no longer take care of the hardware AND the website, so most of them stopped and the job description branched again.

Now server and system engineers grew from that and webmasters became people who “just take care of the website.” The networks grew at this time and specialized people took care of the large networks and the webmasters didn’t need to be network engineers anymore.