The definition of a webmaster is someone who has mastered the web. Therefore it must be a contradiction in terms to have a novice webmaster.

How can you have a novice master at anything for that matter? There are certainly clear steps that can be taken to become a webmaster, but these steps are taken over years, not days or even weeks. There are certain subjects such as DNS, TCP/IP, HTML, SCRIPTING, HOSTING to name but a few that have to be mastered, if not, at least understood. This is not to say that the position of becoming a webmaster is only open to a minority.

This article is not supposed to antagonise people either, but to become a master at anything takes time, commitment and focus. There are no novices in the world of masters.

Do you think they would put a novice golfer into the Golf masters and release a statement on the lines of: -

'Its ok, he’s a novice master.'

I don’t think so.

For all those inspired people that wish to become webmasters, good luck and best wishes. The industry needs more good web masters, but not novice webmasters.

The inspiration for this article comes from all those novice webmasters out there...