what is a webmaster?

[tali122]

a lot of sites mention "webmasters" at bottom of the page- what is a webmaster?

[vehelpfulguy]

Web sites are hosted on PC servers. There are often hundreds of web sites on these servers.

The person who looks after these web sites is called the webmaster.

They will handle things like spam mail coming from a web site, or missing or damaged files on a website, or slow performance from a server, things like that    

[fo3nix]

its quite an old term now though really.. most people who do look after the servers as vhelpfulguy suggests don't call themselves webmasters. they'll be called server admins or something like that.

and thus often the webmaster is the person who made that website and looks after it. (nothing to do with the physical server itself).

[tali122]

thanks vehelpfulguy, so basically they are not an isp but a web hosting services company like "1to 1"

[fo3nix]

it depends.

if it's a personal website, such as your website, then you may put a link to contact the webmaster, and it'll be you. you are just the one that keeps the website up, changes things etc.

the webmaster of this site may be just someone who can modify these pages, say by adding a section. but it's not a very well defined term.