When at the jboye08 Conference in Aarhus last week, I uttered the sentence: "The Webmaster is Dead." I knew that couldn't be an original statement. So, I searched around and found that a few folks had already started the Webmaster swan song years ago. There is this 2006 post from Control-Escape. The post laments the demise of the jack-of-all-trades, do-it-all Webmaster. You can almost hear the heart-breaking violins swelling in the background. Yes, there is still room for everyone to be their own do-it-all Webmaster. But organizations with substantive mission critical Web sites must take a more sophisticated approach.
So, then, I uncovered this post from Françoise Nonnenmacher who said in 2001:
"With only one home page and many different purposes, the web site needs a real manager, not only to take care of the unity of the look and feel (interfacing with the marketing team) and the smooth rollout of new content and services (managing the technology), but also to ensure that the site is always valuable for its visitors."
I like Françoise's statement.
What a great description of a Web Product Manager-- the 21st centuries' "Webmaster." I suggest we kill the term Webmaster. The term has outlived its usefulness. It is quaint. And, for those of us that have held the job title, harkens back to a very exciting time where we pretty much did whatever we wanted in our own little sandbox--just like children. Well, it's time for the Webmaster to grow up, dust off the sand, and start managing the Web. Let's put the term "Webmaster" to rest. Respectfully put it in the WWW Hall of Fame along with the blink tag, and the giant, clickable image map homepage.