Can your community run without your presence?

By this I mean, can you go away for a week or more, and your community will still run - users posting, your staff posting and things like that? I know I've left my community alone a few times in the past and it was doing just fine without my presence - which is great.

How about yours?

 

Yes, this is pretty much by design. There have been a few times where I've been away for an extended period and/or had limited internet access and nothing blew up without me watching over it. My two co-admins have full ACP access and the host's ticket system in case the need arrises.

More-a-less when I'm away all I need to worry about is checking my email for correspondance to the webmaster address.

 

My forum certainly can. I had to leave it for a couple of days once and my members managed to break the record of posts in one day. My staff were all active as usual.

I don't like to leave for too long as I am the only administrator, and nobody else is able to get in the admincp so I really need to be there.

 

I know both my forums could run fine if I was gone for a few weeks but I don't really like to go that long without checking either via the browser or from my phone.
I haven't been very active lately on my gen forum and it's been running fine.

 

Ya, I know what you mean bro. I'm the same way. I don't go away unless I have to, and I make sure all the bills are paid for the long term if I'm gone. I know I made a huge mistake when I lost my community for 3 and a half months and had to re-build because of a jail stint. That really sucked.

 

Yes I think if I gave them a heads up things would be fine, even then I still think it'd be fine without me being physically present for a week or two.

 

Probably not yet. My forum is still very new and still needs daily intensive care (content from me). I think once I get my active member count up, nobody will care if I walk away for a few days. At least thats the plan!

 

I don't own a forum but I'd say that, for a good community, an admin should be able to leave for a few days and come back to an active forum. However, I don't recommend doing that as all admins should be active if not every day at least every other day.

 

Not at the moment, I'm the only person posting.

 

If someone is making new content than of course. Any forum can do easily as good with or without the administrator.

 

I believe that if you take a break from your community, you should make at least 5 to 10 threads before you actually do take a break - that way your community has some type of content to work with, and ask your staff members to post new content while you're gone. As long as you have a good staff team, and good members, they'll keep the community running strong.

 

I suppose my community would last for a bit, but without me there, nothing would get updated.

 

Why is that though? You haven't hired any staff, why?

 

I did have someone helping out in the early days, they arent around any more though. Never really had that much activity to warrant having staff, may have to change that though.

 

Keep us updated. It's always nice to bring some new people on board.

 

Yes, but it can't do as well without my presence simply because there'd be far less interesting content posted regularly.

 

I think yes and no.
In theory, I've discovered that I am sort of an outcast on my own site lol. I don't really fit in with the cliques/groups on my site.
My other staff does and i think they'd likely be able to handle the site without me.

However, none of hem have the desire to really learn how to do designing or tech work when somehting goes wrong. Also when posting is down and severely down, instead of trying to engage members in topics they sort of just half-ass around
So in theory i think they could handle the site provided that nothing major goes on or else they'd kind of put their hands in the sand.

Our chatbox was down the other week(without my knowledge). Idk wwhat happened...instead of my admin telling me about it. she was like "Eh, wasn't that big of a deal. I just didn't worry about it."

But i'd never trust the site in anyone's hands but my own for long periods of time

 

Every time I left for vacations or something and couldn't get internet access at all, and I had to leave the rest of the staff in charge, everything ran smoothly - but it definitely wasn't as active as when I got to log in. I'm the kind of admin that likes to post and participate, so my presence is just like any other active member's: when you leave, people can tell!

 

Yep. I have done it a few times in the past and they're just fine.

Now if I were to disappear long term, then I'm sure things would start crumbling eventually. While my staff and members really love the place and do a lot of the posting, I still do a lot of the thread creation and I *am* a fairly key reason a lot of them are there.

 

Ha i sometimes wish i could take a break from the site for like a week but unfortunately i don't trust my staff(or members) enough for me to do that ;P