====== Webmaster ======

A webmaster is a person who builds, maintains, and takes responsibility for a website. The term fell out of fashion as the role fragmented into specialists, and it is being reclaimed by the independent web as a name for anyone who runs their own site.

Adapted from [[https://brennan.day/webmaster-a-manifesto-for-everyone/|WEBMASTER@ a manifesto for everyone]] on brennan.day.

===== Origins =====

The role descends from the postmaster, the email administrator defined in early Internet specifications. [[https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2142|RFC 2142]] (1997) reserved ''webmaster@domain'' as a contact address the way ''postmaster@domain'' was already reserved. The first webmaster was a woman: [[https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2024-04/Addis_Surfing_19940127.pdf|Louise Addis]] ran the SLAC website from 1993, on the first web server outside CERN.

===== The Golden Age and the Decline =====

From roughly 1994 to 2001, the webmaster was the generalist of the early web: designer, developer, and administrator in one, hand-coding HTML, FTPing files, and answering mail. Free hosts like GeoCities made the role accessible, and the "under construction" sign captured an honest truth: the web is perpetually under construction. See [[https://cybercultural.com/p/geocities-1995/|Cybercultural's GeoCities history]] and Olia Lialina's [[https://blog.geocities.institute/archives/6418|GeoCities' Afterlife and Web History]].

Between roughly 2008 and 2020 the role was split into UX designers, frontend developers, content managers, and SEO specialists, and the term was left behind. Google retired "Google Webmasters" for "Search Central" in [[https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/goodbye-google-webmasters|2020]]. Jay Hoffman's [[https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/what-happened-to-the-webmaster/|What Happened to the Webmaster]] tracks the term's rise and fall; Brian Wold's [[https://brianwold.com/what-happened-to-the-webmaster-and-other-misleading-titles/|rebuttal]] describes the original figure.

===== Reclaiming the Role =====

The independent web uses "webmaster" to mean what it always meant: the person responsible for a site. No credentials required. The communities where the title lives on: [[https://discourse.32bit.cafe|32-bit Cafe forums]], [[https://indieweb.org/IRC|IndieWeb IRC]], [[https://neocities.org|Neocities]], [[https://nekoweb.org|Nekoweb]], and [[https://web1.0hosting.net/|web 1.0 hosting]]. See [[indieweb:web1_aesthetics|Web 1.0 Aesthetics]] and [[indieweb:indie_platforms|Independent Platforms]].

===== See Also =====

  * [[indieweb:start|IndieWeb]]
  * [[indieweb:getting_started|Getting Started]]
  * [[indieweb:hosting|Hosting & Domains]]
  * [[indieweb:web1_aesthetics|Web 1.0 Aesthetics]]
  * [[indieweb:internet_as_place|The Internet as a Place]]
  * [[indieweb:domain_of_ones_own|A Domain of One's Own]]
  * [[protocols:gemini:start|Gemini]]
  * [[start|Return to wiki home]]