- A writer,
editor?
- An artist?
- A business
manager?
- A sales
person
- A marketing
person?
- A trainer,
instructor?
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Turning a
group of web pages created using an HTML editor into
a professional web site involves many technical as well
as non technical issues. Before we can talk about website
planning and management, it important to first start
by defining the role of the Webmaster.
When I first
started to formally define, "What is a Webmaster,"
I spent a full evening searching the web for a consensus
opinion on this topic. After many hours of searching
it was very clear to me that this definition was very
dependent upon who was defining it. As I thought about
my own site, and the tasks of " webmastering,"
I drew from more sales and marketing experiences in
my past than I did technical experiences.
So is a
Webmaster always the Webmaster? In a small website
such as my own, I perform all the duties myself. Depending
on the size of the organization, some of the duties
of a Webmaster may be performed by the same person,
while others may be dispersed into existing jobs. How
a website is structured from one organization to another
will depend upon the size and personality of each location,
or each department within each location. There are many
sites and organizations defining the roles and responsibilities
of Webmasters. The following definitions, on this page
and the pages that follow, reflect the philosophies
of many of these organizations tempered by my own experiences.
So what
is the responsibility of the Webmaster? Before a
newspaper or magazine publishes its first its first
article someone needs to define and organize how the
enterprise will operate. The Webmaster, to borrow some
newspaper terms, is the Web Publisher and Chief Editor
of an entire site for the entire organization. The webmaster
does not actually perform all the tasks needed to build
the site and keep it running, they are simply the person
who makes sure that these tasks get done. Keep in mind
the person with the administrative authority to be the
master of the web may not be, nor do they need to be
the Web Architect. In simple terms the Web Master
is simply the person who manages the editorial content,
overall development and operation of web site.
This is the
first of four pages on defining the basic role of a
webmaster. Please read on...
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