The Oxford English dictionary defines a webmaster this way:
A webmaster (from web and master), also called a web architect, web developer, site author, or website administrator, is a person responsible for maintaining one or many websites.
It is funny, most people in my profession don’t really want this title. They want to design, or perhaps call themselves UX Designers, User Interface Specialists, Information Architect, etc. But once that site goes live, they say: BYE BYE. They have no interest in maintaining websites. It isn’t fun or sexy as designing the sites. They want to move on to the next project. This is why many of their sites fail and fail miserably.
As you have probably gotten tired of me saying “Stale = Fail”. But it is truer today than ever before. Which is why we proudly wear the webmaster hat. No, every text edit or change we make to sites is a barrel of laughs. But we serve a vital purpose and are happy to fill that role for our clients. I wanted RooSites to be a full service internet company. To me this means, being able to design, develop and manage websites. The webmaster role of course is the last part of our offering, the management of your site. This is as important or perhaps more important as the the other 2/3rds of our offering.
To me, this is a lot like a car. You design it, then you build it, and then you service it. No matter how well you design and build it, without the service and maintenance, the car will break down.
So while others may not want to handle the webmaster role, I embrace it. If your company doesn’t have a webmaster, contact us today.
The other day I was on a call with a potential client and he asked me how long I had been in the business. I told him I had built my first site in 1996, the early days of the internet. I got to thinking how time flies and how much things have change in such a short time.
For Instance:
Remember when you had to build sites to look good in 800 x 600 as that was the most popular resolution? Wow has that changed for the better.
Remember when all your clients wanted flash on their sites? Then along came the iPad and changed the world. Thank you Mr. Jobs.
Remember when your choices of fonts was limited to but a few choices?
Remember when AOL was on top of the world? Now a mere shadow of itself.
Remember when dial-up was your only choice? Now modem sounds are history.
Remember when you could only use very small images due to download times?
Remember when Yahoo was the search engine of choice? Now Google not only owns the search market, it has also become a verb.
Remember when you had to build a separate mobile site? Then along came responsive design.
Change is a constant, especially when dealing with technology. As Winston Churchill said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
I couldn’t agree more, and can’t imagine what changes we will see in the next 17 years!
