Six question sets for the employer deciding what to ask: scope and ownership, content and CMS, uptime and backups, SEO and performance, vendors and handover, plus a weighted scorecard. Every question comes with why it is worth asking and what a strong answer sounds like. Download as DOCX.
Webmaster is the last surviving generalist title on the web, and that is exactly why the interviews go badly. One candidate has spent five years publishing pages in a hosted platform. The next has run servers and renewed certificates at two in the morning. Both are honest, both call themselves a webmaster, and comparing them fairly is impossible until you decide what your job actually is.
At FirstHR, we build for small businesses that hire without an HR department, where the owner runs the interview alone and usually cannot personally judge the technical answers. This page is written for that reader: the employer deciding what to ask, not the candidate preparing to answer. Every question below comes with why it is worth asking and what a strong answer sounds like.
Six downloadable sets cover scope and ownership, content and CMS, uptime and security, SEO and performance, vendors and handover, plus a weighted scorecard with a red-flag checklist. If you still need the posting, the webmaster job description templates pair with this page.
TL;DR
Interview a webmaster in five areas plus a scorecard: scope and ownership, content and CMS, uptime, security, and backups, SEO and performance, and vendors and handover. Scope the job before you write the questions, because the title means three different roles. The strongest single question is which accounts you personally hold on a site you run today. Federal data has no webmaster occupation; the nearest classification reported a median of $116,580 and a 25th percentile of $79,370 in May 2025. Download six sets and a weighted rubric as DOCX.
What a Webmaster Actually Owns
A webmaster keeps a company website online, current, secure, and fast, and owns the things nobody else in the company thinks about until they fail. That means hosting and the domain, DNS records, certificate renewals, platform and plugin updates, backups, published pages and images, contact forms, analytics, redirects, accessibility, and coordination with outside vendors.
In a large company those duties split across four people. In a small business they land on one, which is what the word still usefully describes. The practical consequence for your interview is that you are hiring for continuity rather than for a specialty. A web developer builds and ships; a webmaster keeps what exists running week after week.
That distinction should change your questions. Coding depth matters far less than routine, method, and honesty about limits. The candidate who has monitoring on a phone and has restored a backup will serve a small business better than a stronger technologist who has never carried a site.
Scope the Job Before You Pick the Questions
Decide which layers of the stack are in scope before you write a single question, because that decision determines both the interview and the salary. Three tiers cover almost every small business webmaster role, and candidates from different tiers cannot be compared on the same rubric.
Tier 1: content only
Pages, images, prices, hours, staff, promotions, and forms inside a hosted platform. A developer or agency owns everything underneath. Weight the content and publishing questions; do not reject a strong candidate over server answers you will never need.
Tier 2: content plus the site
Everything above, plus the platform itself: themes, plugins, updates, forms, redirects, analytics, and search performance. This is the most common small business webmaster and the one these six sets are built around.
Tier 3: content plus the site plus the stack
Everything above, plus hosting, DNS, certificates, backups, and sometimes a server. Weight the uptime and security set heavily, and expect to pay closer to a systems administrator than to a content editor.
Write the tier into the posting so candidates self-select before you spend an hour on a mismatch. If your role sits firmly in tier three and is mostly servers and hosting rather than content, the web administrator questions are weighted for that and will serve you better than these.
Duty
Tier 1: content
Tier 2: content plus site
Tier 3: plus the stack
Publishes pages, images, and prices
Administers the CMS, themes, and plugins
Owns redirects, analytics, and search performance
Holds hosting, DNS, and certificate renewals
Runs backups and tests restores
One caution on tier one. A content-only webmaster is a legitimate and useful hire, but somebody still has to own the hosting account and the backups. If the answer is nobody, you have not saved money; you have deferred an outage. Name the vendor or the person who covers tier three before you post the job.
The Six Question Sets
The questions are grouped into five competencies plus a scorecard. A strong candidate should hold up across the categories your scope actually includes, not just the ones they are most rehearsed for. Ask at least two from each category in scope.
Scope and Ownership
Ask these first
What the candidate has personally carried, which accounts they hold, and where their job ends. The set that tells you whether the rest of the hour is even relevant.
Content, CMS, and Publishing
The visible half
Platforms they have administered, how a page gets published, request intake, editor roles, mobile, and accessibility. The weekly work.
Uptime, Security, and Backups
The invisible half
Monitoring, the first fifteen minutes of an outage, patching without breaking the site, certificate renewal, and a restore they have actually run.
SEO, Analytics, Performance
Usually in scope
Technical search factors, a URL migration done properly, which reports they check, diagnosing a traffic drop, and making a slow page fast.
Vendors and Handover
The set most skip
Who owns the registrar account, what access they need on day one, what they would hand over, and how they explain things to a non-technical owner.
Scorecard and Red Flags
Score, do not guess
A weighted 1-to-5 rubric across seven areas plus a ten-item red-flag checklist, so the decision rests on written evidence rather than confidence.
Start With Scope, Then Weight the Rest
Always run the scope and ownership set first, for every candidate, at every tier. It takes ten minutes and it tells you whether the remaining fifty are relevant. After that, weight to your reality: a content-heavy role leans on the CMS and publishing set, a stack-heavy one on uptime and backups. The vendors and handover set is the one to keep no matter what, because account ownership is where small businesses actually get hurt. Use the evaluation form alongside the rubric if several people are interviewing.
6 Free Question Sets to Download
Download all six as a single Word document or copy individual sets. Every set follows the same structure: why it matters, the questions with a stated reason to ask and what a strong answer sounds like, what to listen for, and space for notes. Use the same core questions for every candidate.
Download All 6 Webmaster Question Sets
Scope, content and CMS, uptime and backups, SEO and performance, vendors and handover, plus a weighted scorecard with red flags. All in one DOCX.
Set 1: Scope and Ownership Questions
What the candidate has personally carried, which accounts they hold, and where their job ends. Ask these first, for everyone, before you test skills the role may never use.
Scope and Ownership Questions
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW: SCOPE AND OWNERSHIP
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
Date: _
WHY THIS SET COMES FIRST
"Webmaster" is the only common job title that means a different job at every
company. At one business it is a content publisher. At the next it is the person
who also holds the domain, the hosting account, and the certificate renewals.
Ask these questions first so you learn what this candidate has actually owned,
before you spend the rest of the hour testing skills the job may never use.
QUESTIONS
1. Describe a website you run today. What do you personally touch every week?
Why ask: it separates ownership from involvement. Almost everyone has "worked
on a website." Far fewer have carried one.
Strong answer: a specific site, a routine (updates, publishing, checks), and a
clear line between what they do and what a vendor does.
2. Which of these do you hold the login for on a site you maintain: domain
Why ask: the honest answer maps their real depth in ten seconds.
Strong answer: names which ones, and is comfortable saying which they have
never touched.
3. Where does your job end and a developer or an agency begin?
Why ask: a webmaster who cannot draw that line will either overreach or stall.
Strong answer: a clear boundary and an example of escalating something.
4. What was the hardest thing you fixed on a site in the last year?
Why ask: it surfaces real problem solving instead of a duties list.
Strong answer: a specific fault, how they diagnosed it, what they changed.
5. What is on a website that you would refuse to take responsibility for?
Why ask: candidates who claim everything usually own nothing.
Strong answer: an honest limit, stated without embarrassment.
6. If you joined us, what would you want to look at in your first week?
Why ask: it reveals their instincts before you tell them your priorities.
Strong answer: backups, access, uptime, and what is currently broken, not a
redesign pitch.
7. How many sites can one person realistically keep in good shape?
Why ask: it tests judgment about workload, which drives your hiring plan.
Strong answer: a number with reasoning about complexity, not a boast.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Ownership language: "I run", "I hold the account", "I get the alert"
•Honest limits instead of universal competence
•Concrete sites and concrete faults, not categories of work
NOTES
__
__
Set 2: Content, CMS, and Publishing Questions
The visible half of the job: platforms they have administered, how a page gets from request to live, editor roles, mobile, and accessibility. This is the weekly work people notice.
Content, CMS, and Publishing Questions
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW: CONTENT, CMS, AND PUBLISHING
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
WHY THIS SET MATTERS
For most small businesses the visible half of the webmaster job is publishing:
pages, prices, hours, staff changes, promotions, forms. This is the work that
happens weekly and the work people complain about when it is slow. Test it with
the same rigor you would test the technical side.
QUESTIONS
1. Which content platforms have you administered, and what did you do in them?
Why ask: platform familiarity is the difference between a week of ramp and a
month of it.
Strong answer: names a platform (WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow,
Drupal or similar) and describes real tasks: templates, roles, plugins, forms.
2. Walk me through publishing a new page from request to live.
Why ask: it reveals whether they have a process or improvise each time.
Strong answer: draft, review, metadata and images handled, mobile check,
internal links, then publish, with someone approving copy.
3. How do you handle a request that arrives as a screenshot and three emails?
Why ask: this is the actual intake reality at a small company.
Strong answer: a single place for requests, clarifying questions, and a stated
turnaround, rather than heroics.
4. How do you set up who can edit what inside the platform?
Why ask: role separation is how a marketing hire stops breaking the theme.
Strong answer: least privilege by role, editors who cannot install plugins,
and named accounts rather than one shared login.
5. How do you keep a site usable on a phone and accessible to everyone?
Why ask: mobile and accessibility are where small business sites quietly fail.
Strong answer: checks on a real device, alt text, headings in order, contrast,
labeled form fields, and awareness that accessibility is an obligation.
6. Tell me about a change you published that broke something. What happened?
Why ask: everyone has one. The recovery is the signal.
Strong answer: found quickly, rolled back or fixed, and a change to prevent it.
7. How do you keep the site from drifting out of date?
Why ask: stale hours, dead staff pages, and expired promotions are the most
common complaint about a neglected site.
Strong answer: a recurring review, an owner for each section, a simple list.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•A repeatable publishing process, not case-by-case improvisation
•Real platform tasks, not just the platform name
•Mobile and accessibility treated as normal, not as an extra
NOTES
__
Still Using Spreadsheets for Onboarding?
Automate documents, training assignments, task management, and track onboarding progress in real time.
The invisible half: monitoring, the first fifteen minutes of an outage, patching without breaking the site, certificate renewal, and a restore they have actually performed.
Uptime, Security, and Backup Questions
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW: UPTIME, SECURITY, AND BACKUPS
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
WHY THIS SET MATTERS
This is the invisible half of the job. Nobody notices a renewed certificate or a
tested backup. Everybody notices the morning the site is gone. You do not need to
be technical to score these answers; you need to hear whether the candidate has a
routine or has been lucky.
QUESTIONS
1. How would you find out our site is down before a customer tells us?
Why ask: monitoring is the cheapest thing a webmaster can add, and its absence
is the clearest sign of a reactive maintainer.
Strong answer: uptime monitoring with alerts to a phone, checked from outside
the network, plus certificate expiry alerts.
2. Walk me through your first fifteen minutes of an outage.
Why ask: method under pressure is the whole test.
Strong answer: confirm the scope, check host status and recent changes, notify
someone, then fix; not random clicking.
3. What is backed up on a site you run, where does it live, and when did you
last restore it?
Why ask: a backup nobody has restored is a rumor.
Strong answer: files and database, stored off the same server, and a real
restore they have performed, with a rough recovery time.
4. How do you keep a content platform patched without breaking the site?
Why ask: unpatched plugins are the leading cause of small business site
compromise.
Strong answer: staging or a pre-update backup, updates on a schedule, and a
rollback plan.
5. Who should own our SSL certificate and how does renewal happen?
Why ask: expired certificates take sites offline on weekends.
Strong answer: automated renewal where possible, an alert where not, and the
account under a company email.
6. How do you handle logins, and what is your view on multi-factor
authentication for site admins?
Why ask: shared credentials are the standard small business failure.
Strong answer: named accounts, a password manager, multi-factor everywhere,
and removal of access when someone leaves.
7. A form on our site stops delivering email. How do you diagnose it?
Why ask: this exact fault happens constantly and the answer shows method.
Strong answer: reproduce it, check the sending service and logs, check spam
and DNS records for mail authentication, then test end to end.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•A routine on a calendar, not a reaction to incidents
•A restore they have actually performed
•Comfort with least privilege and multi-factor authentication
NOTES
__
Set 4: SEO, Analytics, and Performance Questions
Usually in scope at a small business: technical search factors, a URL migration done properly, which reports they check monthly, and how they make a slow page fast.
SEO, Analytics, and Performance Questions
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW: SEO, ANALYTICS, AND PERFORMANCE
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
WHEN TO USE THIS SET
Use these when the role includes search performance, which at a small business it
usually does. Skip or lighten them if you have a separate marketing hire and the
webmaster is purely operational. Say which it is in the posting so candidates
self-select before you interview them.
QUESTIONS
1. What technical things on a site affect search performance, and which do you
handle yourself?
Why ask: it separates a maintainer who understands search from one who has
only read about it.
Strong answer: crawlability, redirects, duplicate URLs, page titles and
descriptions, structured data, speed, mobile usability, and a clean sitemap.
2. We are changing our page URLs. What do you do?
Why ask: a botched migration is the single most expensive webmaster mistake.
Strong answer: map old to new, permanent redirects, update internal links,
resubmit the sitemap, then watch for errors and traffic drops.
3. Which reports do you check monthly, and what would make you act?
Why ask: analytics without a threshold is decoration.
Strong answer: named reports, a baseline, and a specific trigger for action.
4. Traffic to one page drops by half. Walk me through your diagnosis.
Why ask: this is the real work, and it exposes guessing.
Strong answer: check for tracking breakage first, then indexing, then site
changes, then seasonality, before assuming an algorithm.
5. How do you make a slow page faster?
Why ask: speed is the one performance factor a webmaster genuinely controls.
Strong answer: measure first, then image sizes and formats, caching, fewer
scripts, and a content delivery network if it fits.
6. How do you keep tracking and consent tools from slowing the site down?
Why ask: tag sprawl is the most common self-inflicted speed problem.
Strong answer: an inventory of tags, removal of unused ones, and a named owner.
7. What is the difference between something you can fix and something that needs
new content or a budget?
Why ask: it tests honesty about the limits of technical work.
Strong answer: a clear split, with an example of each.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Measures before changing, and names the measurement
•Treats a redirect map as non-negotiable during a migration
•Distinguishes technical fixes from content and budget problems
NOTES
__
Set 5: Vendors, Documentation, and Handover Questions
The set most interview lists skip entirely: who owns the registrar account, what access they need on day one, what they would hand over, and how they explain a problem in plain language.
Vendors, Documentation, and Handover Questions
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW: VENDORS, DOCUMENTATION, AND HANDOVER
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
WHY THIS SET MATTERS MOST AT A SMALL BUSINESS
A webmaster concentrates more access than any other role in a small company:
When that person leaves and nothing was written down, the renewal notice goes to
an inbox nobody can open. Ask these questions during the interview, not during
the exit.
QUESTIONS
1. Who should own the domain registrar account, you or the business?
Why ask: the answer is a character test with a right answer.
Strong answer: the business, under an account tied to a company email that no
individual personally owns. A candidate who volunteers this has seen a company
locked out of its own domain.
2. What access would you want on day one, and what could wait?
Why ask: it shows whether they think in least privilege.
Strong answer: the minimum to be useful, comfort with the owner keeping
registrar and hosting access, and an expectation of earning more.
3. If you left in three months, what would you hand over?
Why ask: it turns continuity into a concrete deliverable.
Strong answer: a written list of accounts, where credentials live, vendor
contacts, backup location, renewal dates, and a short runbook.
4. How do you document what you do?
Why ask: undocumented work is work the business does not own.
Strong answer: one living page, updated as things change, in a place the
business controls.
5. Tell me about working with a hosting provider or agency that let you down.
Why ask: vendor management is half the job and rarely tested.
Strong answer: escalation, a written record, and a commitment obtained in
writing rather than a complaint.
6. How would you explain a technical problem to me, who is not technical?
Why ask: at a small business you are the only audience they have.
Strong answer: plain language, the business impact first, options with costs.
7. What would you need from us to do this job well?
Why ask: a good candidate has requirements, and they tell you about the role.
Strong answer: a decision maker, a budget line for hosting and tools, and a
single intake channel for requests.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Company ownership of accounts stated as obvious
•A handover they can describe without being prompted twice
•Plain language when explaining something technical
NOTES
__
Set 6: Webmaster Scorecard and Red Flags
A weighted 1-to-5 rubric across seven areas plus a ten-item red-flag checklist, so the decision rests on written evidence rather than on whoever sounded most confident.
Webmaster Scorecard and Red Flags
WEBMASTER INTERVIEW SCORECARD AND RED-FLAG CHECKLIST
Candidate: __
Interviewer: __
Date: _
HOW TO SCORE
Score each area from 1 to 5 immediately after the interview, while the answers
are fresh. Anchor every score to something the candidate actually said. If more
than one person interviews, each scores independently before the group talks, so
the most confident voice does not set the result. Use the same rubric for every
candidate.
5 = Strong, specific evidence 4 = Solid evidence 3 = Some evidence
2 = Weak or mixed evidence 1 = No evidence or red flags
Weight the areas that match the job you scoped. A content-heavy webmaster role
should not be decided by the server questions, and a server-heavy one should not
be decided by the publishing questions.
SCORING AREAS
Scope and ownership: has personally carried a site, states honest limits
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
Content, CMS, and publishing: repeatable process, real platform tasks
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
Uptime, security, and backups: monitoring, patching, a restore they have done
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
SEO, analytics, and performance: measures first, handles a URL migration
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
Vendors, documentation, and handover: company owns the accounts, writes it down
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
Communication: explains technical problems in plain language
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
Evidence of live work: sites you looked at yourself held up
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] Weight: ____
Evidence: ______
RED FLAGS (WEIGH CAREFULLY)
[ ] Cannot name a site they currently maintain, or the links do not work
[ ] Has never restored a backup, or does not know where backups live
[ ] Thinks the registrar account should be in their own name
[ ] Resists the owner keeping registrar and hosting access
[ ] No monitoring anywhere: learns about outages from customers
[ ] Cannot describe a handover or any documentation habit
[ ] Answers every technical question with a redesign proposal
[ ] Uses one shared admin login across people and sites
[ ] Vague about which platforms they have actually administered
[ ] Explains nothing in plain language, only in jargon
The most useful ten minutes of a webmaster interview involve no questions at all. Ask for two sites the candidate currently maintains, then look at them. Maintenance is a present-tense job, so the evidence should be present tense too, not a portfolio of launches from four years ago.
Ask for two sites they run today
Not a portfolio of launches from four years ago. Two sites they currently maintain, with the URLs, so you can look. Maintenance is a present-tense job and the evidence should be present tense too.
Open them on your phone in the room
Load time, layout, whether the menu works, whether a form submits. You do not need to read code to judge whether a site someone maintains is in decent shape on the device most of your customers use.
Ask about the last outage they handled
What broke, how they found out, what they changed so it would not happen again. The third part is the one that separates a maintainer from a firefighter, and most candidates only answer the first two.
Ask what they would check first on our site
Give them your URL before the interview and ask what they noticed. A serious candidate arrives with three specific observations. A weak one arrives with a redesign pitch and no specifics.
Send your own website URL when you schedule the interview and ask what they noticed. A serious candidate arrives with three specific observations: a slow page, a broken link, a form that does not confirm submission. A weak one arrives with a redesign pitch and no specifics, which is its own answer.
How to Judge Answers If You Are Not Technical
You are not grading the technology, you are grading specificity, method, and honesty. That is a judgment any owner can make. Strong answers name a thing, describe a sequence, and admit a limit. Weak answers claim broad competence with no example attached.
What is backed up, where does it live, and when did you last restore it?
Strong answer: Names both files and the database, says the backup is stored somewhere other than the same server, and describes a restore they have actually performed, with a rough sense of how long it took. A very strong answer mentions testing restores on a schedule rather than only after an incident.
Weak answer: Says the host handles it and stops there, or has never restored anything. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, and the day you need it is the wrong day to find out.
Who should own the domain registrar account?
Strong answer: The business, in an account tied to a company email address that no individual personally owns, with the owner retaining access. Candidates who volunteer this without prompting have watched a company get locked out of its own domain and will protect you from the same thing.
Weak answer: Suggests keeping it in their own account for convenience, or has no opinion. Convenience today is a hostage situation the week they leave, and it is the most expensive avoidable mistake in this whole role.
We are changing our page URLs. What do you do?
Strong answer: Maps every old URL to a new one, sets permanent redirects, updates internal links, resubmits the sitemap, and then watches error reports and traffic for several weeks. Treats the redirect map as non-negotiable rather than as cleanup to do later.
Weak answer: Talks about the new URLs only, or says search engines will figure it out. A migration without redirects is the fastest way for a small business to lose the search traffic it spent years earning.
Two further signals are worth weighting heavily. The first is whether the candidate asks you questions: about your platform, your traffic, who approves content, what your budget covers. The second is whether they can explain something technical without jargon, since at a small business you are the only audience they will ever have.
The Ownership Questions Most Interviews Skip
Ask who should own the domain registrar account. It is the highest-value question in this entire page and it has a right answer: the business, in an account tied to a company email address that no individual personally owns. A candidate who volunteers this has watched a company get locked out of its own domain.
Every account under a company email
Registrar, host, platform admin, analytics, and the email sending service, all created on an address the business controls. Ask the candidate whether they agree before you hire, not after.
A written account register in month one
One page listing where the domain, DNS, hosting, certificate, backups, and CMS admin live, and who holds each. Make it a named deliverable in the offer and it will actually exist.
Renewal dates on more than one calendar
Domain and certificate renewals should be visible to the owner, not only to the webmaster. Most lapsed domains are not neglect, they are one person on vacation.
Owner-level access retained by the business
The owner keeps their own login to the registrar and the host. A good candidate treats this as normal. Resistance to it is the clearest red flag in the entire interview.
These are hiring decisions, not offboarding decisions. Every one of them is cheap to set up on day one and expensive to reconstruct after someone leaves. Write the account register into the offer as a named deliverable and it will actually get built, alongside the standard new hire paperwork.
How to Run the Interview
Structure and consistency do most of the work. Prepare the questions, ask the same core set of everyone, score on the rubric, and decide on written evidence. The sequence below works for a single owner or a small panel, and takes 45 to 60 minutes.
Step
What to do
1. Scope
Fix the tier, write it in the posting, weight the rubric to match
2. Send your URL
Ask in advance what they noticed on your site
3. Open with ownership
Run the scope set first, for every candidate
4. Look at their sites
Open two live sites on your phone during the interview
5. Cover the invisible half
Monitoring, patching, certificates, a restore they have run
6. Ask about handover
Registrar ownership, day-one access, what they would leave behind
7. Score
Rate each area 1 to 5 with evidence, independently, immediately
Score while the answers are fresh, and if more than one person interviews, have each score before the group discusses. Technical interviews anchor badly, because whoever sounds most senior tends to set the verdict for the room. A written interview feedback step keeps that from happening.
Companies Using FirstHR Onboard 3x Faster
Join hundreds of small businesses who transformed their new hire experience.
There is no webmaster occupation in federal wage data, so every published number for this title is a proxy and should be treated as one. The nearest classification is a residual category that mixes small business site maintainers with specialized enterprise IT, which pushes its median far above what a small company will pay.
No Exact Match, So Read the Nearest Classifications
O*NET classifies Web Administrators under the residual category Computer Occupations, All Other, whose national median annual wage was $116,580 in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025). The same category's 10th and 25th percentiles, $55,940 and $79,370, sit far closer to a small business webmaster. Comparators from the same survey: Web Developers $92,650, Web and Digital Interface Designers $104,000, Computer Network Support Specialists $76,220, Computer User Support Specialists $61,860 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS national estimates).
Scope tier
Nearest benchmark
May 2025 median
Tier 1: content only
Computer user support specialists
$61,860
Tier 2: content plus the site
Web developers
$92,650
Tier 3: plus hosting and DNS
Computer network support specialists
$76,220
Design-heavy variant
Web and digital interface designers
$104,000
Classification matters as much as the number. The Department of Labor computer employee exemption fact sheet is explicit that job titles do not determine exempt status, and a webmaster whose week is plugin updates and page publishing generally fails its duties test. That points to non-exempt: hourly pay, tracked hours, overtime past forty.
The employee or contractor question turns on the same thing: actual duties and the economic reality of the relationship, not the label on the invoice. Someone who logs in on your schedule, works your request queue, and uses your hosting account is very likely an employee. Decide both before the offer, because they change the questions you ask about availability.
Fair, Legal, and Structured Interviewing
A good interview is fair, legal, and structured, and the three reinforce each other. Asking the same job-related questions of everyone keeps you compliant and produces better hires at the same time. It also protects you from the specific way technical interviews go wrong.
Ask about the job, not the person
Federal anti-discrimination law prohibits basing a hiring decision on protected characteristics, and questions that probe them create risk even when they are asked as small talk. Skip age, race, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy or family plans, disability, and genetic information. In a technical interview the trap is usually friendly rather than hostile: asking when someone learned to build websites as a proxy for age, or where they are originally from after hearing an accent. Keep every question tied to running a website. Every question in these six sets is written to stay on the job. This is general information, not legal advice.
Ask the same core questions of everyone
A structured interview, where every candidate answers the same questions and is scored against the same rubric, predicts on-the-job performance better than a free conversation and reduces the chance that a decision rests on rapport. For a technical hire the risk is specific and easy to miss: a candidate who shares your taste in platforms feels like a great fit while never having tested a restore. Writing the questions before you meet anyone is the single highest-leverage habit available to a small business that hires without an HR department. This is general information, not legal advice.
Accessibility is part of the job, so ask about it
Website accessibility is a real obligation for many businesses, and the Department of Justice has published guidance on how the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to web content. That makes it a legitimate and important interview topic rather than a nice-to-have: ask how the candidate handles alt text, heading order, color contrast, keyboard navigation, and labeled form fields. A webmaster who has never considered accessibility will publish problems faster than anyone can fix them. Ask the question, and write the expectation into the job description. This is general information, not legal advice.
Score independently, then discuss
When more than one person interviews, have each score the rubric alone before the group talks. Technical interviews are especially prone to anchoring, because whoever sounds most senior tends to set the verdict for everyone else in the room. Compare written evidence first, then argue about the gaps. A weighted 1-to-5 rubric filled in independently turns a debate about who seemed impressive into a decision about who answered the questions. For an owner interviewing alone, the scorecard does the same job against your own first impression.
Same Questions, Scored on a Rubric, Predict Better Hires
A structured interview, where every candidate answers the same questions scored against the same rubric, predicts on-the-job performance more reliably than an unstructured conversation, and asking the same job-related questions of everyone is also the practical safeguard against basing a decision on the protected characteristics the EEOC prohibits. For a technical role the risk is concrete: a candidate who shares your taste in platforms feels like an obvious fit while never having tested a restore.
Accessibility deserves a place in the questions rather than a footnote. The Department of Justice has published guidance on web accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which makes alt text, heading order, contrast, and labeled form fields legitimate interview topics for anyone publishing to your site. Keep every other question tied to the job, and avoid the questions employers cannot ask. This is general information, not legal advice.
Interviewing a Webmaster Without HR
A large company hires a webmaster through a recruiter, a technical panel, and a coordinated scorecard. A small business hires through the owner, who is usually not technical and is making the call between everything else. That reality shapes how you should run the interview, and it is where the avoidable mistakes happen.
You are hiring for a job you cannot personally evaluate
Most owners hiring a webmaster cannot judge whether a candidate is technically good, which is why these searches so often end with whoever sounded most confident. Confidence is not the signal. Evidence is. Ask for two sites the candidate maintains today and open them on your phone. Ask what broke last and what they changed so it would not recur. Ask what they would check first if the contact form stopped delivering. Each of those questions produces an answer a non-technical person can score, because you are judging specificity, method, and honesty rather than grading the technology. The good-answer notes in each set are there so you never have to guess what right sounds like.
The title means six different jobs, so candidates arrive mismatched
Webmaster is the last surviving generalist job title on the web, which is exactly why the interviews go badly. One candidate has spent five years publishing pages in a hosted platform. The next has run servers. Both are honest, and both call themselves a webmaster. If you do not scope the role before you write the questions, you will interview two incomparable people and pick the one who interviewed better rather than the one who fits. Decide which layers of the stack are in scope, say it in the posting, and weight the scorecard the same way.
One person ends up holding every key to your online presence
The webmaster job concentrates access like almost no other role in a small company: the domain registrar, DNS, hosting, platform admin, analytics, the payment gateway, and the email sending service. In most small businesses all of that lives in one person’s password manager and nowhere else. The failure mode is not malice, it is ordinary life: they leave, get sick, or take another job, and the renewal notice goes to an inbox nobody can open. Fix it at hiring rather than at exit. Ask the ownership questions during the interview, make an account register a named deliverable, and keep the registrar and hosting billing in the business name. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Two practical habits close most of the gap. Run a reference check that asks specifically about reliability and documentation rather than general impressions. And if your budget allows, buy two hours of real maintenance work on your actual site as a paid trial task; it is the most informative thing you can purchase, and it tells you more than a third interview would. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
From Interview to Onboarding
The interview is step one. A webmaster's first week is almost entirely access provisioning, and their last week should be the exact reverse, which makes onboarding this role a controls exercise as much as a welcome. Start with a written offer letter and a signed confidentiality agreement before any credential changes hands.
Offer, confidentiality, acceptable use
A written offer plus confidentiality and acceptable-use acknowledgments signed before a single credential changes hands, since this hire will hold the keys to your public site.
Provision with least privilege
Named accounts only, no shared logins, multi-factor authentication everywhere, and owner-level access to the registrar and the host retained by the business.
Write the account register together
In month one, produce the page that records where the domain, DNS, hosting, certificate, backups, and CMS admin live, plus renewal dates and vendor contacts.
Name the first ninety days
Pick the first real improvement, usually monitoring or a tested restore, and define what good looks like at thirty, sixty, and ninety days before the start date.
FirstHR was built for that sequence. The onboarding wizard runs the same steps for every hire, built-in e-signature handles the confidentiality and acceptable-use acknowledgments, document management stores the account register and renewal dates against the employee profile, and task workflows assign each access grant to a named owner with a due date, so offboarding can run the same list backward. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not a hosting provider or a website tool, so pair it with those. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Scope the job into a tier before writing questions, because webmaster means three different roles and candidates from different tiers cannot be compared.
Ask the scope and ownership set first, for every candidate: what they have personally carried and which accounts they hold.
Run the evidence test: two sites they maintain today, opened on your phone, plus what broke last and what they changed.
Test the invisible half directly, especially a backup they have actually restored and how they learn the site is down.
Ask who should own the domain registrar account; the right answer is the business, and resistance to that is the clearest red flag.
Score a weighted 1-to-5 rubric independently and immediately, since technical interviews anchor to whoever sounds most senior.
Federal data has no webmaster occupation: benchmark against the nearest classifications and settle exempt status on duties, not the title.
Frequently Asked Questions
What questions should I ask a webmaster candidate?
Ask across five areas plus a scorecard: scope and ownership, content and CMS publishing, uptime and security and backups, SEO and analytics and performance, and vendors and documentation and handover. The strongest single question is describe a website you run today and what you personally touch every week, because it separates real ownership from involvement. Follow it with what is backed up and when did you last restore it, who should own the domain registrar account, how would you find out our site is down before a customer tells us, and what would you hand over if you left in three months. Each question should have a stated reason you are asking it and a note on what a strong answer sounds like, so a non-technical owner can score the response. All six downloadable sets on this page are written that way.
How do I interview a webmaster if I am not technical?
You do not need to grade the technology, you need to judge specificity, method, and honesty. Ask for two sites the candidate maintains right now, open them on your phone during the interview, and check load time, layout, the menu, and whether a form submits. Ask what broke most recently, how they found out, and what they changed so it would not happen again; the third part is what separates a maintainer from a firefighter. Ask them to explain a technical problem to you in plain language, because at a small business you are the only audience they will have. Strong answers are concrete and admit limits. Weak answers are universal competence with no example attached. The good-answer notes in each question set tell you what right sounds like.
What is the difference between a webmaster and a web developer?
A web developer builds, and a webmaster keeps what exists running. A developer writes code, ships features, and usually works from a project brief with a defined end date. A webmaster owns the site continuously: publishing pages, updating the platform, renewing certificates, checking backups, fixing forms, watching analytics, and coordinating vendors. In a large company those duties split across a developer, a designer, a systems administrator, and a content editor. In a small business they land on one person, which is exactly what the word webmaster still usefully describes. That is why the interview should test ownership and routine rather than coding depth, unless your scope genuinely includes building new functionality, in which case interview for a developer instead.
What are red flags in a webmaster interview?
The clearest red flags are structural rather than technical. Watch for a candidate who cannot name a site they currently maintain or whose links do not load, who has never restored a backup or does not know where backups live, who thinks the domain registrar account should be in their own name, or who resists the business keeping owner-level access to the registrar and host. Others worth weighing: no monitoring anywhere, so outages are discovered by customers; no documentation habit and no answer about handover; one shared admin login used across people and sites; and answering every specific question with a redesign proposal. None of these require technical judgment to spot, which is why they belong on a small business scorecard. The downloadable rubric on this page includes a ten-item red-flag checklist.
How much does a webmaster cost to hire?
There is no webmaster occupation in federal wage data, so every published figure for the title is a proxy. O*NET classifies Web Administrators inside the Bureau of Labor Statistics residual category Computer Occupations, All Other, whose national median annual wage was 116,580 dollars in the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025. That category mixes small business site maintainers with specialized enterprise IT, so its median overstates this role badly; the 10th and 25th percentiles, 55,940 and 79,370 dollars, sit far closer to reality for a small company. Useful comparators from the same survey: Web Developers at 92,650 dollars, Web and Digital Interface Designers at 104,000, and Computer User Support Specialists at 61,860. Pay tracks the scope you defined, not the title.
Is a webmaster exempt from overtime?
Usually not, but it depends entirely on actual duties rather than the title. The federal exemption for computer employees covers systems analysts, programmers, software engineers, and similarly skilled workers whose primary duty is systems analysis, program design, development, or testing. The Department of Labor states plainly that job titles do not determine exemption status and that employees whose work merely depends on computers, without being primarily engaged in systems analysis and programming, are not exempt. A webmaster whose week is plugin updates, page publishing, form fixes, and vendor email is doing skilled maintenance rather than systems design, which points to non-exempt: hourly pay, tracked hours, and overtime past forty hours in a week. Decide the classification before you make the offer and write it into the posting. This is general information, not legal advice.
Should I hire a webmaster as an employee or a contractor?
The label on the invoice does not decide it; the economic reality of the relationship does. Consider who controls the schedule, the methods, and the priorities, whose accounts and tools are used, whether the work is a permanent part of running the business, and whether the person has a genuine independent business serving other clients. Someone who logs in on your schedule, works your request queue, uses your hosting account, and has no other clients is very likely an employee regardless of how they invoice. Misclassification arrives with back wages, unpaid overtime, and payroll tax exposure attached. A genuinely part-time or fractional webmaster serving several businesses on their own terms can be a legitimate contractor. Decide this before the offer, because it changes pay, paperwork, and the interview questions about availability. This is general information, not legal advice.
How long should a webmaster interview be?
Plan 45 to 60 minutes for a first interview and a shorter second round if you need it. That is enough to cover the scope set in full plus two or three questions from each of the other categories, with follow-ups. Depth beats breadth here: the follow-up on a single backup question tells you more than racing through twenty topics. Send your website URL in advance and ask what they noticed, which turns the first five minutes into evidence instead of small talk. Score immediately afterward while the answers are fresh, using the same weighted rubric for every candidate. If a paid trial task fits your budget, two hours of real maintenance work on your actual site is the most informative thing you can buy, and it tells you more than a third interview would.
