Webmasters Then and Now

The first website was developed in 1990 by the first webmaster. After a decade of an existing but separate internet communication system and hypertext language, someone finally came up with the idea to combine these two distinct computer technologies. From the start, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was used to write these first web pages. It was considered very basic as compared to today’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), server-side scripting, and other new discoveries and inventions in the field. Whereas the first website design was merely a collection of headings and paragraphs, it was already using hypertext to navigate to other pages. The websites of today, however, are filled with images and videos too.

 Nowadays, being a webmaster is a growing profession. The World Wide Web is ever expanding. Expert communicators and operators are ever needed in this field. A webmaster must have a collection of skills in order to operate. A webmaster is a computer savvy fellow with more than a basic knowledge of everything about the web. This is opposed to a specialist who would be concentrating his expertise on only one aspect. There is website management, web hosting, web content management, web design, graphics compression, domain name registration, online marketing, site maintenance, e-commerce, search engine optimization, link development, access rights, site navigation, and such. The new language includes such terms that were meaningless decades ago. RSS, HTML, CSS, WYSIWYG, Perl, PHP and ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, FTP transfers; a webmaster today will be able to understand all of these words and phrases. He will have all the necessary skills to manipulate and shape them to make a website for today’s diverse needs.