WEBMASTER

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 the responsibility of developing, coordinating and maintaining 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 these tasks are assumed by the same person .

Suppose a shoemaker company 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 ensure 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 , you start writing articles and publishing them. In this case, the journalist is a webmaster who develops the information and publishes it, without there being a technician in charge of the task.

When the webmaster is only the technical manager of the publication, he must respect various ethical criteria : he cannot steal the content and provide it 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.

Competences and tasks of the webmaster

If we look once more 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 all webmaster must know perfectly every corner of the sites he administers , since it is about his creations, spaces that can be considered his and that he must maintain and defend against the whole world.

A good webmaster must be aware of the structure of your website, both from a technical and design point of view, to know what you need at all times to be up to date. Let's not forget that technology advances without rest, and that one of the ills of the Internet is the loss of compatibility suffered by many pages every time the browsers are updated.

Webmasters must also have the knowledge and tools necessary to move (or move) a site from one server to another ; This task is very common and, in general, it is carried out with the purpose of hiring a cheaper hosting service or to transfer the content to a more modern equipment with more features than the previous one.

Conducting copies of security ( backups ) is one of the main functions of the webmaster, and it is very important to combat all types of emergencies that threaten data integrity, as being a possible failure to solve hard disk principal. Let's not forget that, unlike what happened in the early 90s, the content of today's websites is absolutely dynamic, it grows every second, so the loss of a few hours of data can already have negative consequences for your performance.

Perhaps the most difficult task of a webmaster is the constant search for means to combat insecurity, so typical of the Internet. The aforementioned dynamism is as beneficial as it is detrimental, as many users plague websites with spam and overly offensive comments, requiring constant monitoring to prevent such content from lingering for too long.