A webmaster is responsible for the development, coordination and maintenance of a website.
Webmaster is a concept that is formed from two English words: web (which can be translated as "network" ) and master (whose meaning in our language is "master, master or owner" ). The notion refers to the person who has responsibility for the development , coordination and maintenance of a website .
It is important to keep in mind, however, that a webmaster can have different powers. In some cases, it is the expert who is dedicated to the programming and operation of the site; In others, it is the subject who creates and edits the content . Many times, all of these tasks are assumed by the same person.
Webmaster Examples
Suppose a company dedicated to manufacturing footwear decides to launch a website . The president of the company hires a webmaster to design, publish, and update the site. The role of this webmaster, therefore, is to take care of technical issues and guarantee the availability of the content provided by the shoe company itself.
A journalist, on the other hand, decides to launch his own blog with information and opinions. After signing up for a free CMS , start writing articles and publishing them. In this case, the journalist is a webmaster who develops the information and publishes it, without a technician in charge of the task.
It should be noted that when the webmaster is only technically responsible for the publication, he must respect various ethical criteria : he cannot steal the contents and provide them to another site, he must take care of the intellectual property of the data, he must provide clear and real information to the contractor. , etc.
A webmaster can have different responsibilities and functions.
Competencies and tasks
If we look once again at the literal meaning of each term, one of the two terms that make up this word of English origin, and pay special attention to the meanings that allow us to translate master as "owner or master", it is logical to assume that everything Webmaster must know perfectly every corner of the sites he manages , since these are his creations, spaces that can be considered his and that he must maintain and defend against the entire world.
A good webmaster must be aware of the structure of his website, both from a technical and design point of view, to know what he needs at all times to stay up to date. Let us not forget that technology advances relentlessly, and that one of the evils of the Internet is the loss of compatibility that many pages suffer every time browsers are updated.
Webmasters must also have the knowledge and tools necessary to move (or relocate) a site from one server to another ; This task is very common and is generally carried out with the purpose of hiring a cheaper hosting service or to transfer the content to a more modern computer with more features than the previous one.
Making backup copies is another of the webmaster's main functions, and it is very important to combat all types of emergency situations that threaten the integrity of the data, such as an impossible to resolve failure on the hard drive . major. Let us not forget that, unlike what happened in the early 90s, the content of today's websites is absolutely dynamic, growing every second, which is why the loss of a few hours of data can have negative consequences. for its performance .
Perhaps the most difficult task of a webmaster is the constant search for means to combat the insecurity, so typical of the Internet . The aforementioned dynamism is as beneficial as it is harmful, since many users plague websites with spam and overly offensive comments, making it necessary to maintain constant control to prevent said content from remaining for a long time.