The title of webmaster covers a broad spectrum these days. If you browse through job listings, you'll find that many companies have moved away from this title altogether because it is so generic. Companies now use more specific titles such as web designer, web developer, information architect, etc...

 

When most people hear the word webmaster, the definition that most often comes to mind is someone who creates websites. This is certainly true, but it only describes a fraction of a webmaster's duties and only still describes that fraction superficially. So what is involved in being a webmaster? More than most people realize. Let's have a look at a webmaster's basic job and then examine the 7 secret duties of a webmaster closer.

 

With tools like Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver available on the market, it would seem to suggest that making a website is no longer a specialized skill requiring a professional webmaster. But there are reasons why tools like dreamweaver are not the best tools to use. Aside from this point, there are other issues to consider. A website is more than a collection of web pages, it's a complex document that requires a thorough understanding of basic webmaster principles to work well.

 

There's a great deal of thought that has to go into the overall scope and structure of a website before any HTML is ever written. Once they understand the site as a whole, a webmaster can begin basic page design. 

 

The site structure must come first because it influences page design heavily, particularly a page's menu design. The site's content then needs to be incorporated into the website's basic template. Though the actual work of adding the content is often done last, content must be sketched out and drafted early on as it also has an influence on page design.

 

Now that you've had a brief introduction on the basic duties of a webmaster we're ready to look at some of their other duties. Let's go through seven major duties a webmaster undertakes but most people don't know about.

 

 

 

One of the most often overlooked responsibilities of a webmaster is that it is often their job to be the first point of contact for your organization. Your website is the public face of your organization online and your webmaster can often be the first person they meet. This means that your webmaster has to have strong customer service skills, a good understanding of your organization's structure so that they can redirect requests appropriately and they have to be monitoring their e-mail very often, ready to respond to user requests in a timely manner. After all, people online expect and appreciate quick turnaround on their questions.

 

 

 

Another significant task that a webmaster is responsible for is what I like to call "content facilitation". For some websites the webmaster can be the sole author of the site's content, but in a medium to large organization this is rarely the case. In these organizations, the webmaster must play the role of a mediator between the audience, the website and the rest of the organization. This means that the webmaster must have a thorough understanding of the website's audience and an equally thorough understanding of the organization and its structure. It also means mediating internal company pressures in a face to face manner.

 

Everyone wants their content to be in a prominent location because everyone who writes content writes it for a reason. They believe it is critical information that the website visitors need. In real terms, this results in frequent discussions with people inside your organization and equally frequent explanations of the website structure and why it works for your users.

 

A webmaster must also recognize which parts of the website are most important to develop further based on traffic patterns and visitor response. Then they must pursue the individuals within the organization who are best equipped to provide the needed content. The final step is to integrate that content into the structure of the website. In some cases, this is as simple as adding a single page and a link to that page. But sometimes it can be far more complex, requiring an entire section of the website to be re-structured.

 

 

 

Occasional re-structuring requires a webmaster to be well versed in information architecture. Information architecture is all about organizing information in a manner that will allow people to find what they're looking for. It sounds very straightforward, but it can become quite difficult. 

 

Every webmaster uses information architecture principles when building a site whether they're aware of it or not, but the more complex the structure of a website gets, the harder it becomes to fake your way through it. The strength of a website's information architecture will have a direct and immediate impact on your visitors' ability to find what they're looking for, so it's important for a webmaster to study up and get it right.

 

 

 

Another task critical to a website's growth and development is the analysis of their website's logs. It's crucial for a webmaster to know everything about their web log file because it's the source of most of the information a webmaster will get on their visitors. But there's more to monitoring your log file than getting base demographic data on your audience. Monitoring a log file using a statistics package will allow a webmaster to react to, and sometimes predict changes. Those changes can take many forms, but the one big change that is important to watch out for is growth.

 

 

 

What we've already discussed generally relates to the present duties of a webmaster. But a competent webmaster must look beyond the present state of affairs and plan for the future. Traffic growth is but one of the many things that a webmaster has to plan for. Traffic growth is important because it will have a direct impact on the costs of your web hosting, but other factors such as general site expansion will also have an effect on hosting costs. Site expansion can require increased disk space, CPU usage, memory usage, special software requirements, databases, and more. A webmaster must be able to anticipate the audience's needs in order to properly plan for these eventualities.

 

Finally though, we can't forget about the most important future plan a webmaster (or anyone who works with computers for that matter) will ever make. That is the disaster recovery plan. A disaster recovery plan is all about how you would get your website back online should something bad happen to the computers where your site is hosted. A disaster recovery plan is important, important and important. It's like insurance, absolutely critical to have, but doesn't feel like it's worth it until you need it.

 

 

 

Ensuring that a website is accessible is a substantial task that goes well beyond finding and using an accessibility checker. One such example is that you must make sure that your visitors are able to orient themselves no matter where they enter your site. While this is very difficult for an automated checker to measure, it is much easier when done by person.

 

The language you use must also be appropriate for as broad an audience as possible. As your topic becomes more complex and specialized, this task becomes harder. You can't always use basic language elements to describe complex ideas. Simplifying the language on your site then becomes yet another task that requires judgment calls on a webmaster's part. This type of judgment cannot be automated with today's technology.

 

 

 

Search engine optimization is also a fundamental webmaster responsibility. If something is put on the web, it is safe to assume that you want people to find it. Search engines are what people use to find information on the web. As a result, a webmaster must have at least a basic understanding of how they work. Search Engine Optimization is a broad field, and can consume a webmaster's entire day, so it is something that must be balanced carefully.

 

These seven duties go beyond the basics that most people are aware of, but are not an exhaustive list of what all webmasters do. This article has should have brought you from having surface knowledge of what a webmaster does to seeing the tip of the iceberg. But remember, there's still a lot left to learn. Most of the remaining tasks and duties tend to be very specific to a particular webmaster. As in most other domains, each webmaster will specialize in a different area, becoming an expert in their area of choice. This level of expertise is what will make up the tasks and duties that lie beyond the tip of the iceberg. 

 

To learn more about it, invite a webmaster you know out for lunch and ask them some questions. After all, we all like getting a free lunch and talking about ourselves :)