Building a site and uploading it is not an easy task; Only after that, the work begins! After designing the site and launching it, it’s time to manage it! This is where the need for a webmaster shows itself.
In this article, we want to see who the webmaster is, what his duties are, what skills he should have, how to become a webmaster, and… Remember that building a site is just the beginning. If you want your site to perform at its best, you need to pay special attention to its maintenance. The maintenance process is the responsibility of the webmaster.
Let’s not introduce too much. Let’s first see who we are talking about.
Who is the webmaster?
Web + Master (Web + Master) means a website manager, a person managing a site. This job title can include a variety of duties. Whether only one person has all the responsibilities or a team is different according to the type of site and business approach. The employer who hires you as a webmaster may provide you with a team due to the small volume of work, the fledgling business, or the limited budget or ask you to carry out the work yourself. In any case, you need knowledge and skills that we will discuss further.
What are the duties of a webmaster?
What are the duties of a webmaster?
The duties that each employer expects from you as a webmaster differ and change according to the working conditions, the field of activity, and the type of business in question. Even if a team works under you and every task is done by its specialist, you still need to have a variety of skills as a supervisor:
1. Ability to produce and verify site content
The web admin must fully monitor the content of the site. The web admin must approve each piece of content before publication. In addition, some webmasters are required to produce the content themselves, especially in small businesses where the employer does not have enough funds to hire content production staff. Also, when the site is not so high-traffic and big, creating content is included in the list of duties of the site manager or the webmaster.
2. Responsibilities related to hosting, server, and domain
At the beginning of the work, the webmaster is expected to find a suitable host and server for the website, register the desired domain of the employer, and take the measures related to domain renewal within the stipulated time.
In addition to the above, the site’s security is the webmaster’s responsibility. The web admin must troubleshoot the site and determine the appropriate time for hosting upgrades according to the site’s incoming traffic. To determine the right time, it is necessary to constantly monitor the site, evaluate its speed and check access to different pages. Most businesses choose a shared hosting at the beginning of their work so that they don’t have to bear too much pressure in terms of cost; But with the passage of time and the increase of the site’s input, the shared host cannot respond to the high traffic of the site. In such a situation, there is a need to upgrade the site that the webmaster recognizes this time.
3. Repairs and maintenance of the site
The site’s performance must be constantly evaluated and checked; Displayed errors should be fixed, and updates should be prioritized regularly. Content management systems like WordPress must update plugins regularly to maintain good performance.
The webmaster checks the pages with low traffic and fixes them. Another task of the webmaster is to check the site on different browsers and operating systems and fix its problems. A professional and standard website should be responsive. Examining and dealing with such issues is one of the duties of web admins.
Besides these, the web admin must be able to provide the site’s security and keep it safe from cyber attacks. Various tools and skills are needed for this work, which the site manager must master.
But what are the necessary skills of a webmaster?!
What skills should a professional web admin have?
This section examines the most important skills required for a webmaster job. You can acquire these skills over time. Some require continuous training, and others are acquired only through experience. Depending on the tasks that the employer expects from you, you will need different skills:
1) Mastery of at least one programming language
The web admin must have complete mastery of at least one programming language. Since the programming language of most content management services, such as WordPress, is PHP, if you have not yet started learning programming language and coding, try PHP.
2) familiarity with website design and graphic design
As a webmaster, even if you are not able to design a website, you should be familiar with it and be able to supervise the website design team. In the situation that you are not responsible for designing the site, as well as coding and uploading the website, you must be completely proficient in it.
3) Full familiarity with computer science
Adequate knowledge of computer science will both help increase your salary and make many jobs easier for you. Hardware and software awareness increases your confidence. In addition, webmaster training in an academic environment with the field of computer science or similar fields is a requirement for hiring some companies and businesses.
4) Interest and ability to do teamwork
Being able to create intimacy and feel empathy for others is an important social skill in all fields, But especially in the webmaster job, you need to communicate well.
Both your team members and website contacts and customers need your attention. It is good to be a listener and listen carefully to their problems. Respond to customer questions and problems in critical situations and teach your team to work together.
5) Mastery of cyber security skills
As a webmaster, you must know how to protect the site from security attacks. Above, we mentioned this as one of the duties of web admins. Also, in the event of cyber attacks, you must quickly take control of the situation and minimize the damage. The damage that hackers do to your site is not necessarily financial. They can cripple your site or even destroy your business. Therefore, it is necessary to be familiar with the types of security attacks and know what actions to take if you encounter each one.
6) Ability to produce content and write content strategy
If you are working in a startup company, they probably expect you to provide the site content yourself. Creating content based on SEO principles to improve site ranking and generally complete the website is one of the duties of many web admins. Learning these two things can have very good job opportunities for you.
We recommend reading the related article to learn more about the content marketing category.
7) Full familiarity with the principles of site optimization for search engines (SEO)
A web admin must know how to improve the site’s ranking in search engines. To achieve such conditions, you need to work on the contents, increase the site’s speed and remove the extra pages. SEO consists of various actions that the web admin must master.
8) General management of the site
For this, you need to answer users and solve their problems. It is better to know the right site management tools and how to use them. Two tools that help you a lot in this field are Google Analytics and Search Console. We have educational articles on the blog for both tools that you can read.
Well, now that we know all this about the job description of a webmaster, let’s see what path we should take to become a web admin.
How can we become a webmaster?
Webmaster is one of the jobs that are very popular now and has a bright future. As a professional webmaster, you can earn a high income and progress quickly. This job overlaps with positions such as SEO specialist, web designer, and back-end and front-end developer. The following tips will help you become a professional webmaster.
- Having relevant education to become a webmaster is a competitive advantage but not mandatory. For example, be an IT, software, computer science, or cyber security graduate. Remember that there are successful web admins who do not have an academic education, but by taking webmaster courses and working in this field, they are very professional.
- Another prerequisite for becoming a webmaster is availability. Sometimes a problem occurs for the website outside of working hours, which your monitoring and follow-up can only solve. Therefore, it is better to be online often so they can contact you in case of any problems.
- As you have seen, you must be adept in several different and sometimes very different fields simultaneously. Even if you want to outsource parts of the work or leave it to your team members, you need to master the whole of it.
- As a webmaster, you need to be creative, pay attention to detail, and stay focused on your work for long periods.
By following these 4 points, the path to becoming a webmaster will be smoother for you. A job that has significant benefits.
What are the benefits of being a webmaster?
Site management is one of the most popular jobs nowadays. However, not many people succeed because it is not an easy task and requires many skills. The advantages of this job that make it attractive are:
- Relatively high income and the possibility of advancement and salary increase
- Ability to learn while working and increase skills
- Experiences and learnings from teamwork
- The possibility of remote work
- Flexible working hours
- The possibility of working on a freelance and project basis
One of the common misconceptions is not distinguishing between a web admin and a web designer. Let’s learn the differences between these two jobs once and for all.
Differences between webmaster and web designer
There seems to be a fine line between the job of the site manager and the website designer. We have summarized the differences between these two job titles in the table below; However, a site administrator can also be its designer.
| Webmaster | Web designer |
| It deals with the technical and structural problems of the site. | It is important to design the appearance and overview of the site and its user-friendliness. |
| It is better to master marketing and customer communication techniques. | There is no requirement to communicate directly with the customer of the site. |
| He necessarily monitors the site daily and deals with its problems. | Updates the site once in a while. |
| Being a creative webmaster is an advantage. | Creativity is a must for a website designer! |
Conclusion
As you read, the webmaster job is very broad, and the more you know and the more varied experiences you have, the better job positions will be offered in this article about what a webmaster is. We reach the difference between the job description of a webmaster er and a web designer. In the meantime, we have covered everything you need to know. If we forgot something, write to us so that other readers and we can benefit from your knowledge.