I was a webmaster for a few websites for a brief period of time but I wasn’t very good and it was too brief. All in all I have no idea what the job title of webmastering may entail. I do however work as a front-end developer, in-house, and prefer to focus on those sorts of details rather than content updates, etc.
However I may be taking on a webmaster job and I’m curious if anyone can give some insight as to what that’s like? I’m sure it completely depends on the client but I’m curious to hear descriptions of your experiences? Were you expected to make updates late at night? Do you provide monthly analytics reports? Are you on call throughout the week?
The definition of what exactly a “webmaster” does varies from organization to organization. There is no universal standard. However, in general, you would likely be responsible for maintaining a website in some fashion.
If you are taking on a new position, it is best to ask your employer what they expect from you.
^ indeed - go back 15-20 years and a “webmaster” was often responsible for everthying related to a site, from coding to design to programming, hosting, email and the rest of it.
Nowadays the name isn’t really used so much and has been largely replaced by specific roles, eg web designer, graphic designer, programmer, UX specialist, content authors and so on. So as Force Flow said it’d be a good idea to ask what’s required.
I still think of the term as meaning the owner/operator of a small website. Now “small” could still mean a site enough traffic and revenue to generate thousands per month, but as you get into big business, I don’t think the term has relevance. In the example you describe, they probably are looking for an overall “manager” of the technical needs of the website. I think it would be helpful to know if you would have an operating budget to hire specialists when needed.
You say “I may be taking on a webmaster job and I’m curious if anyone can give some insight as to what that’s like?”
Surely, the person to ask is the person who is offering you the job. If you have already discussed the job with them, they must have given you some idea of what the work entails and what your duties will be. If they haven’t, you’d better find out pretty quick.
I don’t see any point in posting the question on a forum where nobody can know anything about the particular job that you will be doing. Find out more about the job description, then let us know what it is so that we can give you some meaningful advice.