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Staffing

Every Web site has a Webmaster: a term which is used to describe a rôle rather than an individual. The Webmaster is used as an anonymous point of contact, set up as an electronic mail alias (webmaster), for other Web users who may have queries about the site relating to either technical or editorial matters. It is also often used as a shorthand term to refer to the server administrator. There is no logical reason why the duties of the Webmaster cannot be shared out amongst more than one member of staff.

Administering a Web server overlaps with general system administration. The organization may have an Information Services department that would take on the running of the server. Server administration is quite a separate rôle from that of editors, who are responsible for the content of Web documents. As there may be some conceptual overlap between these rôles it is as well to make the division of responsibilities explicit. Liaison between the server administrators and the editorial staff needs to be good. If your organization is a large one, several departments may need to be involved.

Programming staff may be required to develop software for generating dynamic documents. These may be interfaces between the server and other applications, such as database systems or other information systems. There are a number of routine tasks that need to be carried out regularly once the server is up and running. Some of these, such as generating indexes and analysing log files, can be automated in a straightforward manner.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.