Why Webmasters Could not Sleep at Night

Some of the problems faced by webmasters:

Bottlenecks and Looming Schedules

The webmaster was the only person who knew how to convert documents and other materials to decent web pages. Everyone who needed to get their material published online relied on them.

By the time the material arrived on the webmaster's desk, there was not much time to get the information online. A good part of the day was spent on making the document web-friendly and getting it to look like the thousands of other web pages. As the number of contributors grew, it was not surprising to find that webmasters could not keep up with the volume of change and soon became a bottleneck in the workflow process.

Online Content Became Out-of-Date

The webmaster's in-tray was full of backlogged work. As long as the task remained outstanding, the website continued to display out-dated information. The poor employee was already working overtime, busy cranking as many pages as his or her poor sore fingers could crunch out.

Inconsistent Look and Feel

As the website gained popularity, so did its scope. Gradually, every department in the organization wanted to have a presence on the website. Each department had its own boss. Each boss had a different idea on how the design of the web pages representing their department should appear. Different teams of webmasters were assigned to create each site. Without any way to govern the look and feel, the website started to look more and more like grandmother's patchwork quilt with each sub-web having its own individual identity.

Duplication of Content all over the Website

Content was duplicated all over the place. Updating content often meant scouring the entire website for the duplicates and amending the changes page by page. Say, the opening hours of a shop has been changed. Uh-oh, looks like another late night at the office. Among the thousands of pages on the website, which ones contain the shop's operating hours?