Who Killed the Webmaster?
January 28th, 2007
Back in the frontier days of the web–when flaming skulls, scrolling marquees, and rainbow divider lines dominated the landscape–”Webmaster” was a vaunted, almost mythical, title. The Webmaster was a techno-shaman versed the black arts needed to make words and images appear on this new-fangled Information Superhighway. With the rise of the Webmaster coinciding with the explosive growth of the web, everyone predicted the birth of a new, well paying, and in-demand profession. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I’m left wondering “Who killed the Webmaster?”
Suspect #1: The march of technology
By 2000, I think every person in the developed world had a brother-in-law who created websites on the side. Armed with Frontpage and a pirated copy of Photoshop, he’d charge a reasonable fee per page (though posting more than three images cost extra.)
Eventually the web hit equilibrium and just having a website didn’t make a company hip and cutting-edge. Now management demanded that their website look better than the site immediately ranked above in search results. And as expensive as the sites were, ought they not “do something” too? Companies increasingly wanted an exceptional website requiring a sophisticated combination of talent to pull off. HTML and FTP skills, as useful as they had been, were no longer a sharp enough tool in the Webmaster’s toolbox. Technologies such as CSS and multi-tier web application development rapidly made WYSIWYG editors useless for all but ordinary websites. And with the explosion of competition and possibilities on the Internet few businesses were willing to pay for “ordinary”.
In 1995, the “professional web design firm” was single, talented person working from home. Today it’s a diverse team of back-end developers, front-end developers, graphic artists, UI designers, database and systems administrators, search engine marketing experts, analytics specialists, copywriters, editors, and project managers. The industry has simply grown so specialized, so quickly, for one person to hardly be a master of anything more than a single strand in the web.
Suspect #2: Is it the economy, stupid?
Then again, perhaps the disappearance of the Webmaster can better be explained by an underwhelming economy rather than overwhelming technology. Riding high on the bull market of the late 90’s, companies were increasingly willing to assume more risk to reach potential customers. This was especially true of small businesses, which traditionally have miniscule advertising and marketing budgets. Everyone wanted a piece of the Internet pie and each turned to the Webmaster to deliver. More than just a few Webmasters made a respectable living by cranking out a couple $500 websites every week.
Once the bubble burst in early 2000, the dot-com hangover left many small businesses clutching their heads and checking their wallets. As companies braced to solely maintain what they already had, the first cut inevitably was to marketing and advertising. In-house Webmasters were summarily let go, their duties hastily transferred to an already overworked office manager. Freelance Webmasters were hit even harder as business owners struggled to first take care of their own. The gold rush had crumbled to fools’ gold even faster than it had started.
While a few Webmaster were able to weather the storm—mostly those with either extraordinary skills or a gainfully employed spouse—the majority were forced to abandon their budding profession and return to the world of the mundane.
Suspect #3: The rise of Web 2.0
Another strong possibility is that the Internet has simply evolved beyond the Webmaster. “Web 2.0″ is the naked emperor of technological neologisms; we all nod our head at the term but then stammer when pressed for a definition. As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. But it also seems to be about an emphasis on social collaboration. This may seem like a no-brainer given the connectedness of the Internet itself; however, thinking back to Web 1.0 there was a distinct lack of this philosophy. Web 1.0 was more an arms race to build “mindshare” and “eyeballs” in order to make it to the top of the hill with the most venture capital. Even the Web 1.0 term of “portal” conjures up an image of Lewis Carroll’s Alice tumbling down a hole and into an experience wholly managed by the resident experts–the Webmasters. Despite the power and promises to be so much more, the web wasn’t much different than network television or print. Even the most interesting and successful business models of the Web 1.0 era could have been accomplished years prior with an automated telephone system.
It wasn’t until after the failure of the initial experiment did people begin to rethink the entire concept of the Internet. Was the Webmaster as gatekeeper really necessary? If we all have a story to share, why can’t everyone contribute to the collective experience? Perhaps it was the overabundance of Herman Miller chairs, but Web 1.0 was inarguably about style over substance. Yet, as anyone who’s ever visited MySpace can attest, today content is king. With all of us simultaneously contributing and consuming on blogs, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and SecondLife, who needs a Webmaster anymore?
Entry Filed under: Design, Development, Random Musings
120 Comments
1. Mladen Bucan | January 29th, 2007 at 2:24 am
CMS killed Webmasters.
2. Lewis | January 29th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Lewis Carrol not C.S Lewis
3. Son Nguyen | January 29th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Interesting analysis, personally I find the word “master” in “webmaster” problematic right from the start.
4. Erufailon | January 29th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I assume you’re thinking of Lewis Carrol, rather than C.S. Lewis?
Otherwise a nice article.
5. ryu | January 29th, 2007 at 2:34 am
lewis carroll wrote alice in wonderland, not cs lewis
6. Mark Myers | January 29th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Great article. I have one correction, though. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, not C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis DID have a portal to a fabulous world–the wardrobe.
7. jjbegin | January 29th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Thanks all for catching my Lewis Carroll typo. Fixed.
8. Shayne Power | January 29th, 2007 at 2:43 am
It was Lewis Carroll’s Alice, not CS Lewis’s Alice.
Sorry, just saw the telemovie the other day.
9. Ahoten | January 29th, 2007 at 2:45 am
Nicely done, insightful and well written. The first two “Suspects” I completely agree with, having been a web developer both before and after the “burst” and having literally watched the things you mention happen right before my eyes at the firm I contracted for.
Your third “Suspect” however, has left me feeling required to comment. You’ve got the right idea, but I think there’s more to it. This “web 2.0″ age - the age of the web following the inwardly-focused sites - is an age in which we as web developers have realized that the true use of this “Internet” we’ve built is to create programs (automation) that brings together in meaningful ways the immense amount of information (knowledge) the human race has begun to generate.
When I said the previous “age” was one of “inwardly”-focused sites, I mean to say that because of the dot-com boom specifically, the web was over-capitalized to the point that no site realized the benefit of aggregating the wealth of “geographically” disparate information that was available (”geographically” as in separated in distance on the web, by url or otherwise). Google was the first, and is still the best, at developing incfredible automation that can be let upon a task at which humans were never suited.
“Webmasters,” as the used to be, have ceased to exist because the new web requires serious vision on the part of the programmers developing the sites, and to meet the expectation of the hundreds of millions online today, professional graphics designers have become the standard requirement for true “web 2.0″ design nirvana.
10. Naru | January 29th, 2007 at 2:57 am
I very much enjoyed that post. Being a web-designer and graphic artist, I am not surprised that “The Webmaster” has gone MIA. I think many will share my opinion when I say “good riddance to ill-crafted websites that made navigation a lot harder than it needed it to be…and had far too many animated gifs as a sad attempt to look dynamic”. Accessibility is a huge issue these days. People will no longer bother if browsing a website seems far more effort than it’s worth or than the user in question is capable of.
11. Ryan | January 29th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Great post! I think I am actually one of the few ‘webmasters’ left out there, and I work for a company that normally has 10+ web developers per site.
I really think #1 is the most correct reason for the disappearance of ‘webmasters’. When a webpage was just HTML, one person could handle creating it. But now, with dynamic sites, DB’s, CSS, UI, UE, localization, QA, etc, etc, you really need a team of people to get a site out the door in a timely fashion.
Good stuff!
12. Pasamio | January 29th, 2007 at 3:00 am
A few things, 1) webmaster still lives on just not as common, 2) CMS’ moved the web master from the primary point of contact/updater of the website to all of the users with the web master only maintaining things where necessary. I agree that web masters have been not only expanded but integrated into other roles beyond what one man can do. I’ve seen this especially having moved from a single web master, an old librarian, to a ‘webmaster’ managing the technical aspect and applying simple fixes as well as training, maintainence/backend officer and a dedicated web content editor as well as the users who ‘own’ their content.
13. feed:// » Blog Arch&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 3:09 am
[…] En un post en Right Brain Networks se analizan las posibles causas (incremento de la especialización técnica, económicos o el cambio de modelo de negocio) que explicarían la ignominia del ‘maestro de la web‘. […]
14. Hermes | January 29th, 2007 at 3:27 am
Great article - I particularly agree with numbers 1 & 3, having been a webmaster myself (but since moved on).
I think another suspect, certainly in big companies, is the wont of marketing people to use external agencies for resource and time to market reasons (understandable, one guy can only do so much).
And also the fact that they never paid us enough
15. Eeeric | January 29th, 2007 at 3:33 am
Webmasters are to me the amateurs running their own pityful websites. Today, the cool guys are Communication Directors and all they need to know is how to use the CMS that the IT department installed.
16. Bigboi | January 29th, 2007 at 3:34 am
Very nice article. Congrats on being featured on Slashdot.
17. relliker | January 29th, 2007 at 3:47 am
So that’s why I no longer get replies when I email webmaster@xxx.yyy to tell them their disk is full. They’re all gone fishing….
18. wica | January 29th, 2007 at 3:47 am
I guess the adult industrie on the net has killed the webmaster.
Webmaster is almost == to porn website manager
19. MoD | January 29th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Quote
“Webmasters are to me the amateurs running their own pityful websites. Today, the cool guys are Communication Directors and all they need to know is how to use the CMS that the IT department installed.”
This is so true. Web space hasn’t reached the WebApp level yet and I really don’t think it ever well. It’s a moving target. Every year a new programming language is released. AJAX, Ruby on Rails. CMS systems have come a long way, but you really don’t need a dedicated position for this task. That is what PR people do.
20. Blogface | January 29th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Ryan: Agreed. Too many web sites were hard to navigate in the dark age of web design, where AJAX would prevent the back button from being useful, where you could no longer paste a link to a comrade because the state was only held in JavaScript. I will be glad when “Web 2.0″ is gone.
21. MD | January 29th, 2007 at 3:51 am
“Content” is king? On MySpace?? BWAhahaha! Thanks for making my day.
22. Stu Strib | January 29th, 2007 at 4:22 am
Very nice article. I’ve been searching for these words for 5 years now!
23. Eric Blade | January 29th, 2007 at 4:44 am
The guy asking this question and positing his thoughts has a web-site that doesn’t validate.
I’d consider this when wondering what happened to the devs.
Of course, making a website is so super simple, that it’s something any halfwit should be able to do.
24. Joe Bob | January 29th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Thinks like Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver killed the webmaster by making tools so any Joe Bob could call themselves a “webmaster”.
25. Nick | January 29th, 2007 at 5:28 am
Some webmasters died, others became administrators for the next flavour-of-the-month CMS. What happened to phpNuke, the once ideal CMS for everything?
26. JD | January 29th, 2007 at 5:31 am
It is the same as with the development of the motor car. It went from a few people doing many jobs to many people doing a few specialized jobs on an assembly line. You can roll out a website faster using an assembly line process with many experts doing a few jobs very well than having a single webmaster who is semi-competent at many jobs.
27. Webmaster: dead on arriva&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 5:37 am
[…] This article on Yet Another Web Development Blog explores the demise of the Webmaster as a profession. My favorite quote from the article? As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners,low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. Butit also seems to be about an emphasis on social collaboration. […]
28. Takayama | January 29th, 2007 at 5:38 am
You seem to be living in some sort of parralel universe … CSS has hardly touched WYSIWYG editors, unfortunately. Most Pages are still creted by Frontpage, Dreamweaver et. al. Just try to look at some website’s source.
29. Jerry Kew | January 29th, 2007 at 5:44 am
The daft name webMASTER suggested exclusion, ie, I understand this web stuff you don’t, and I am in control of your website. webMASTERs were a hurdle to people within a business getting their content out there, it is a dreadful self aggrandizing term. They have evolved away because businesses want control of their own content, not to be ‘granted’ the favour of it being updated for them. Blogging has shown the world that content management should be the norm.
As soon as people learnt to use Frontpage and could paste in nasty little animated gifs, they labelled themselves webMASTERs, no self respecting web site manager, editor, publisher would use such a devalued term.
my few cents worth
Jerry
30. tek | January 29th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I giggled when I read this, mostly because it’s so true. Suspect #2 has my vote, I was one of the ones that weathered the storm; lucky for me I moved in to the Education sector as a developer and continued to freelance at the same time. Worked for me.
31. Rich Watson | January 29th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Web Developers calling themselves ‘Webmasters’ is like drummers calling their little chair a ‘Throne’
32. howie | January 29th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Great article. I think the webmaster became the bottle-neck of websites. Like mentioned in previous comments, institutions need updated content by a number of individuals and the easiest way to do it is with a CMS.
33. mocker | January 29th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Webmasters turned in ‘web developers’ for the most part. Suspect #1 is the real cause. #3 is important, but still not the rule by far. There is still a large demand for static, web 1.0 style sites. What does community collaboration have to do with Joe’s Plumbing website?
The real break is between ‘web developers’ and ‘web designers’ now. ‘Webmasters’ are more the people who update their Joomla pages, or change the theme on a wordpress.. , web developers make all those nifty tools, and web designers make it pretty and attractive.
A good analogy is the early years of game development, where one or two people could work on their game and release it. And now top games are on the scale of hollywood movies, with millions of dollars thrown into large numbers of specialized workers
34. rose pruyne » Read &hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 7:03 am
[…] Just when I was hoping for a resurgence of flaming skulls… […]
35. …but I did not kill&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 7:10 am
[…] Slashdot | Who Killed the Webmaster? “With the explosive growth of the Web in the previous decade, many predicted the birth of a new, well-paying, and in-demand profession: the Webmaster. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I’m left wondering: Who killed the Webmaster?“ […]
36. Rose Pruyne’s Blog &hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 7:13 am
[…] Just when I was hoping for a resurgence of flaming skulls… […]
37. Andy Moore | January 29th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Web master, that seriously sucks as a term, may they rest in peace, good riddance.
I think the web master had to learn how to be a web developer to keep clients happy nwhen they requested XY&Z
Then the web developer wrote the CMS that killed off the web master as we knew them.
Finally the end user got their hands on the CMS and gave it flashy animated backgrounds, dancing cats, spinning globe icons, embedded video, audio and junk.
The end user is now the master of the web but looking at myspace they don’t know what to do with it.
What happens in the next five years when the kids who are on myspace today have moved on and started building their own apps.
What will web 3.0 be like? I guess part of will be beautifully crafted by amazing dedicated teams who know what they’re doing and the other part will be user generated and look like a bad acid trip on your screen.
38. en3r0 | January 29th, 2007 at 7:35 am
Great article, I think a combonation of the 3 is to blame.
God bless,
-en3r0
39. Trevor Bramble | January 29th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Insightful post, however I disagree slightly regarding #3.
“Web 2.0″ (/grimace/) is distinguished by the use of advanced interactivity, the evolution of a fully read/write web. You cut straight to the point when you describe the established model as static and one-way: “Despite the power and promises to be so much more, the web wasn’t much different than network television or print.”
The difference in culture that you mis-attribute to “Web 1.0″ was a cultural difference demarcated by the dot-com crash. The smarmy version numbers are meant to describe only that the web is coming to a point where it is truly, finally, the interactive, two-way medium that everyone expected it to be.
Cheers,
Trevor
40. Teriyaki’s Donut &r&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 7:59 am
[…] Who shot the Webmaster? […]
41. Chris | January 29th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Being a former “webmaster” I would have to say I agree, it is a dying if not dead breed. Today’s sites are too complex for one person to handle it all.
Seems most of us “webmasters” have ended up being web managers, trying our hardest to pull all those complex parts of a web 2.0 site together and of course under budget.
42. Pete | January 29th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I think the key feature of web2.0 is the seamless accessibility to data, through single-logins, multiple access, etc. In other words, if you have a homepage on MySpace, a blog on Blogspot, pictures of Flickr and stores on Amazon and eBay, you can integrate them all and feed the information, ie take your identity, from one location to the other. It is the layering and recombination of data that adds another dimension to the internet, bringing about “Web2.0.”
43. Lauch | January 29th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I think a term that could be used is Web Brand Manager. After all, most websites try to extend a product beyond the material realm. It’s like most products that companies create.
You have a product that needs to be perceived in many different ways. A laundry detergent might just be soap, but it’s advertised and presented in so many different ways. You have the item on the shelf. You have the item in the advertisement, in magazines, newspapers, on tv. These are all presented many different ways. And you have the manager that presents that product, directing the people who create the “vision”.
Having a “webmaster” used to mean someone with full control over the website. These days, as stated, this includes programming, database management, design aspects (CSS, HTML), user feedback..etc. You need to have a manager overseeing the “production flow”. Perhaps “brand manager” might not work as a term, but website design certainly has the manager in control of direction and flow just as brands have that.
44. Lauch | January 29th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Just an FYI - I also went to U of Toledo 1996-2001 or so. Good to see fellow alumni!
45. John A. Bilicki III | January 29th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Lack of standards killed the webmaster, it’s true. People don’t need Flash but they think they do. People don’t need Photoshop slices, but they think they do. People don’t need fontsize=”1″ in their source code but they have it anyway.
Another problem: non-professional “professionals”. I’m the only person who codes in valid XHTML 1.1 application/xhtml+xml, WAI AAA compliance, 508, CSS 2.1, and tableless layout standard code. But I’m not looking for work, why? There is better money to be made elsewhere.
Fourteen year olds who illegally download Dreamweaver think their 2 megabyte table layout pages are the bomb. “Oh my brother can make you a webpage”. The profession has been taken out by the non-professionals and NO ONE is setting the standard.
Where am I in the mix? Unfortunately one can’t make a living from $20 a page because eventually those pages run out. People also want interactivity that will require serverside related skills and if you’re good with serverside code you probably couldn’t write valid HTML 3.2 while making a good looking site. Design and Development are completely alien to each other and while many will dispute this how many PHP geniuses do you know how can do it all? None. Designers can be good at designing, developers are good at developing.
Lastly designers don’t know how to design and those that do tend to work for magazines and not on their websites. When was the last time you encountered a page that made use of :focus pseudo-element not in a meaningful way but in any way? Did CMS kill the webmaster? I think it’s only part of the problem. Every industry has it’s standards including ours and I have a sneaky suspicion that while no one really follows standards (except for a minority of us and thank goodness for at least them) I would imagine this is an issue for every industry. It’s mainly the idea that no one wants to pay for quality and a missing doctype and JavaScript code before the opening HTML element (referred to as “tag” by non-professionals) won’t get caught by a validator by the person who hired the person to create a page for them.
In the face of it all I’ll give credit to the many who actively research the topic as it’s one hell of a hobby.
46. Auron | January 29th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Wordpress killed all the webmasters.
47. Boomslang | January 29th, 2007 at 8:45 am
The web is about content and the webmaster is an arrogant jerk, technogeek guru construct that while technically competent, has no outside interests that make him have the staying power to exist any longer than initially setting up a website. The people interested in producing the content need initially, designers that create layout, templates and a way of storing all that, once in operation, they need professional help from time to time to change the design, but it’s all about content and once again, the master in webmaster says it all, a dungeons and dragons name that’s kind of like the comicbook shop owner on “The Simpsons” who might know comic books and could webmaster a site on them, but no inclination to do it.
48. Sammy | January 29th, 2007 at 8:50 am
There have been several posts expressing this sentiment, so I’ll just echo it here. We may not have webmasters anymore but we have web designers, web application programmers and UI designers, and content administrators in multitudes. We’ve also reached a point where pretty much anyone can get a simple web site up with a tiny bit of training, because there are companies out there who specialize in making site design easy for non-designers and non-geeks.
In other words, we have specialists to handle the hard stuff, and the easy stuff is mostly done by do-it-yourselfers. Why would we have it any other way?
As a side note: as a sysadmin who dabbles in web programming and design on occasion, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting self-described webmasters on a number of occasions. On most such occasions, their technical skills left something to be desired. I had to explain to one guy, who actually taught courses on site building, why it was probably not a good idea to have SQL code in embedded Perl on every page of your web site, including the user credentials for the connection strings.
49. Dan | January 29th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Interesting article for sure. Some valid points. I don’t agree that they are “dead”. I think, just like the web, they have evolved. I think it is quite a bit more difficult to obtain the title “webmaster”. You need to know a lot more than just HTML and FTP. I think a “webmaster” is one who can be dropped in to any situation (application development, CSS, HTML, graphic design, scripting, DBA, web server administration, etc.) and shine. There are still “webmasters” out there, they are just harder to find and doing much more than updating HTML via FTP. Good article though, I enjoyed reading it.
50. josh | January 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Nice article, but I have to agree with a few of the other comments that wordpress and other CMS have taken their toll on the webmaster.
51. Dave | January 29th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Yes I agree “Dan”, there are multi-faceted webmasters that are still around. Take me for an example. I dont have the budget to pay 10 people to build my site, so I just learn it all myself and do the best I can in each task.
Small startup sites that just are ideas with pride cannot afford back-end developers, front-end developers, graphic artists, UI designers, database administrators, search engine marketing experts, analytics specialists, copywriters, editors, and project managers.
I find that all of these technologies and new requirements of a web 2.0 application sometimes cause normal developers to become well rounded enthusists in each of the site administration needs. This could be a terrible thing if you are only good at back end programming. Most of the hardware and networking stuff can go to your service provider, unless you are into that kind of stuff.
My point is:
Webmaster == ‘low budget projects who cant afford all those assistants’
http://www.memorycrawler.com/
52. Jerry | January 29th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Managers, ha ha! I’d love to be able to just have meetings and emails for work. It’d be so fucking pointless.
53. Stevious | January 29th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Webmaster = The occupational equivalent of working on an auto assembly line, knowing that the cars you’re producing are going to explode sometime in the next five years, killing everyone inside them.
54. Outlandish Josh | January 29th, 2007 at 9:38 am
It’s a combination of factors. CMSs obliviate the need for a specialist to be in the mix merely to post to the web. That’s a huge step forward for most businesses and organizations, and ultimately a positive thing in terms of lowering barriers to entry.
The old position of “webmaster” is now spread out between talented writers who are HTML-literate, graphic designers who can make templates and special pages, and CMS engineers who design systems and functionality.
55. Andrew | January 29th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Webmaster was a senseless term as far back as 1998. I worked as a feeds programmer for a PR company back then. We had PR releases throughout the Americas, in English, Portugese, and Spanish.
They hired a woman with a linguistics degree, and no computer skills whatsoever, to handle the Portugese and Spanish PR releases. She met with customers, and showed her business card. Her title on the card was “International Webmaster”.
56. mark | January 29th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I’d agree with that, our company has a team of 14 webmasters, who actually have no idea about anything to do with web development. They are just an interactive customer support team. It seems they acquired the name many years ago and it has stuck.
57. :pseudo-element{} »&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 10:02 am
[…] I just read a really short but interesting article that was linked on slashDot. It’s making me feel at the same time anxious and exhilirated. It also made me laugh with the best analysis of what web 2.0 actually is all about. As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. […]
58. wade | January 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am
I suspect I’ll be dating myself somewhat with the following. Be that as it may, what I do is “multimedia development”.
It was multimedia when it was distributed via floppy and, as so far as I’m concerned, it’s still multimedia when distributed via the web. It was multimedia when it was developed in hypercard and it’s still multimedia when developed in xhtml, javascript, mysql, flash or a myriad of other tools/languages.
I’ve used the titles “webmaster” and “web developer” with an understanding that they will likely evolve into something else- something that the client will be able identify with a particular technology. And that’s fine. I’m not in the least bit constrained by either title because what I *do* is multimedia.
If the plumbing in your house springs a leak, you don’t care if the “plumber” has a masters degree in engineering so long as the water quits running into the basement. And guess what- he doesn’t care if you refer to him as a “plumber” so long as the check clears.
Working the above analogy a little harder, if you hire a plumber whose only tool is a plunger (ie frontpage), you can rightfully expect he’s not going to be in business a long time. It might also be prudent to ask your wife to bring home some swim fins when she stops off to pick up milk after work.
The “webmaster” didn’t die. He or she simply added a few more tools to the collection and kept on moving.
59. Lauch | January 29th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Having not been a web designer as much as a web design hobbyist, it’s difficult to really know what title to use. I’ve always wanted to design websites as a job, but never put forth the effort to really “dig my heels in”.
Jerry’s comment about manager struck me as interesting. Perhaps the field has been thrown together over the years so sloppy, that the actual title has been lost amongst the projects that have created for said job.
I know that I’ve seen several titles across my screen when browsing monster.com, and none really seemed to fit. But I do know from a business prospective, all projects must be managed to be effective. If you consider the old “webmaster” title, it was mainly one guy doing all the html and design work. That job is still in existence, but it takes a tandem of people working together to get the jobs done.
Does the title “designer” replace the webmaster role? No. But it’s an intricate part. So, perhaps Web Brand Manager is not the right way to put it. Since it’s a team job, then perhaps “Web Brand Management Team” is more precise?
60. Brian Boyko | January 29th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Web sites that aren’t complex use Mambo/Joomla or WordPress, and have no need of an administrative Webmaster.
Web sites that ARE complex need a programming Web Developer.
Web sites that want to look pretty need a Graphic Designer (Web).
Basically, Webmaster is a term from an era when HTML 3.0, and later CSS, were obscure programming languages known only to a few. Now, they’ve been replaced by robots.
61. hand|paper|lake&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Webmaster — DOA?
This fellow is talking about how the profession of the webmaster seems to be waning. I can’t say I disagree — I’ve posited a fair number of times in the past that I think the role of the lone web designer and even the small houses wou…
62. Warren Grant | January 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am
The Webmaster profession is indeed dead. Within my experience - as a professional hired in that capacity by a successful software company - it was killed by a combination of things. First off, the perception that anyone can do it because Frontpage and Dreamweaver make it so easy - which of course misses out on dozens of other aspects of site design which are not handled by some WYSIWYG editor. Secondly, the perception that for most companies, the website is merely an extension of marketing, and as such the Marketing Department is fully capable of taking their announcements and just pasting them on a webpage without change. Certainly in the last company I worked at, I was moved from IT to Marketing & Sales - where I was constantly explaining how websites worked to people who had little interest in the subject, and constantly working to help revise written content to suit the web effectively. Lastly, the evolution of websites in general, adding in more complex technologies, back end programming, CSS, Flash, etc - often where it really isn’t needed and often actually obscuring the information content to some degree. The Webmaster has most often transformed into some form of Web Developer due to these changes, and more than likely become a team.
The funny thing is, I think its still quite justifiable to have one individual who vetts the content, briefs people on content requirements, style of writing, maintains the various aspects fo the site, draws up design specs for new features etc - its just that we call them something like a Site Manager now instead of a Webmaster. Webmaster was always a rather stupid term in any case
63. Chiron | January 29th, 2007 at 11:05 am
However lets be honest about one thing… We have an absolute tidal wave of badly designed, defective websites out there.
Webmasters are dead, long live eyesore websites.
64. xevioso | January 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I’m currently a webmaster, and make a great living working from home. I think the key is diversity…large projects require lots of people with a few talents, or a few people withmany talents. The latter is generally cheaper and easier to work with, so compamines are often very willing to work with one reliable person who can handle a multitude of tasks.
I feel strongly that design is an integral part of a good website, and if a company can find a person who can handle the design, development, implementation, QA and installation of a site, they will jump at the chance. I’m also discovering that being able to manage a site by choosing the right technologies is very valuable.
We exist, but the skills required are pretty diverse. I think the mainr eason not so many of us exist is that many people specialized in one type of web skill and did not jump at the chances they had to learn new skills. Ont he days I’m not using HTML I’m happily designing sites, or building them in Flash.
65. giantyoda | January 29th, 2007 at 11:18 am
The webmaster simply evolved to a more technical role - web applications developer, etc. Those who didn’t put in the smarts, time and effort to further their skillsets/knowledge don’t work on the web anymore…or are graphics/content people. I’d say the webmaster cocooned in the 00’s and a more advanced version of the profession got its wings.
66. Al | January 29th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Hey, wait a minute. I am definitely not an arrogant jerk. I work at a place where a small community of professionals is elegantly stimulated to contriubute content. The organization needs me to coherently and systematically train them to do so, to do follow-ups, to provide their help desk. The organization wants me there, so they tell me their objectives in cleartext basicEnglish and I can then code / webdevelop their needs in a precision, unified, totally coherent fashion. In a customary day I optimize my SQL, translate, write-up articles, test the usability of some new feauture, graphically design this feature and make the appropiate calls to schedule a training for the new feauture / policy to take effect. I would have already taken time to implement some mainainance script or deploy my new stylesheet. My organization does not have the resources to pay a team of part-timers to do my job in a disorganized