I would like to know what defines a "webmaster"? What are or should be the skills, function and general responsibilities of a webmaster.
And, if you are a webmaster, what do you do, what do you know and what helps you most (knowledge or tool) to do your job.
Thanks!
Webmaster is an old fashioned term to define the administrator of a website. It's in charge of mantaining it and usually bug reports, questions about the working of the website and so on used to be send to him.
While it's being used in quite some sites today it's not very usual these days as better options (like the user invoice of stackoverflow) exists for dealing with such problems.
Webmaster is a term from old days when Internet was something new and few people understand it. To me, webmaster has no relevant signification and it is better to use more precise terms like: webdesigner, webdeveloper, webadministrator...
For a quick answer you can check out Wikipedia's definition:
The webmaster (feminine: webmistress), also called the web architect, the web developer, the site author, or the website administrator, is the person responsible for designing, developing, marketing, or maintaining a website. On community websites, webmasters are able to change and manipulate any comment that the users make.
If you are interested, you can also check out International WebMasters Associations which provides more details on the subject, offering various classes and certifications.
Webmasters are generally the person(s) responsible for a website so that it is a mix of systems administrator and web developer.
Skills would include understanding at least one server software, e.g. Apache or Microsoft Internet Information Services, and some basic HTML skills. Now generally there should also be some server-side scripting/programming, e.g. PHP or ASP.Net, as well as possibly knowing some Javascript, CSS, XHTML, and how to configure a server.
To write all that I know would likely take almost a decade as it would be 33 years of memories in addition to the knowledge that I possess from living those years like remembering net
JB
There is Wikipedia's definition
However, if you are using the term "webmaster" then chances are you don't know the difference between a sysadmin and a developer (which is perfectly ok :) ). In this case, the webmaster is the person who runs your website and answers your web related questions.
Sadly, at least here (Poland) by webmaster people usually understand a person to do:
So it looks like a webmaster is a 1-person company to run every job that has anything to do with the website.
O'Reilly's "Webmaster in a Nutshell" covers the following topcs:
I'd more or less agree with that technology set as a definition with a couple of caveats:
A 13 year old kid with a whole lot of attitude and a MacBook.