Issue: Whose Budget Is It?

Who pays for the Home Page? Marketing? Customer Support? Public Relations? Advertising? A combination of all? The answer will vary based on the company, size and marketing mission of the web site. While it is beyond the scope of this book to suggest a hard and fast rule, companies certainly should decide who will pay for the site.

Issue: What Role Does the Web Master Play?

While "web master" is the coolest title on anyone's business card these days, no one can agree on the role or responsibilities of such a person. At some companies, "web master" is synonymous with "king." At other companies, they are propeller heads who tinker with hardware and software, either to the relief or consternation of the marketing department.

The role of the web master will change radically in the short term. The power will shift from the technician to the thinker. While HTML programming skills and knowledge of network servers seemed like a task for rocket scientists a few months ago, new software is making these tasks less daunting, even transparent to many web masters.

The situation compares to when I was a news editor for a group of daily newspaper in Westchester County, New York. The Gannett Westchester Rockland Newspapers were the first in the country to have full-page composition systems on their computers (this was years before Page Maker brought the same results to desktop computers). I was among the first 12 editors in the country to use this system. In the beginning, we were high level editors and treated with great respect for our knowledge at being able to handle tedious layout chores that formerly took tedious minutes to accomplish in just seconds. However, as the technology spread and more editors learned to use the systems, the tasks became routine. In less than a year, a new job category was created for "paginators" who worked under news editors and merely followed orders to lay out the papers. They had almost no discretion on placing articles or writing headlines.

The same will happen to web masters.

Conclusion

Corporations must set policies regarding mission, content and public persona before going online to avoid problems.