Multiple Administrators

Do you have multiple administrators on your forum? If so, how many (and what are the basic stats of the board)? Are tasks and responsibilities divided up amongst the administrators, or do all of you handle the same things?

Do you like having multiple administrators, or do you prefer flying solo?

Lastly, did these administrators participate in the construction of your forum since the beginning, or were they promoted through the chain of command and brought on-board at a later date? If the latter, how do you feel about bringing a stranger onto the administration team?

 

Myself and my girlfriend administrate our teen forums and have done so since the start of them. To be honest, living with someone who administrates with you does make for good decisions as youre able to talk about any problem on the forums right away and in person, which I would hate if it was a case of hmmm I need to wait 4 hours for the other admin to get online and ask them first.

It can end up with a few arguments too, for example if we disagree on how something was handled but thats to be expected

To be honest my girlfriend was the main one to get the teen forum right off the ground by promoting it over and over day in day out in any way she could and I was mainly the one who would do the skin and settings etc so it wasnt just one persons job and helped loads.

If I was to start another project it would be a solo one as I dont trust anyone over the internet, even if I had briefly met them in person I would never give someone hosting client area access or even cpanel access/whm access for that matter. Anyone can turn at any moment and I would rather not have that problem.

The only time I can imagine ever having another admin would be one with reduced permissions, no style editing, no hard deletion, forum managing or anything similar it would purely be user management access.

 

on one forum, there was two of us, he has more of an interest in the subject of the forum, im just there to do the back end stuff. i do post though, and im friendly with the members. i wasnt there from the start, i was offered a job on another forum similar to this one, that isnt around anymore, cause it was his first forum and he needed someone who knows about phpbb. now there is one, me, and one who never comes on.

on the second, also two, we are just starting out and do things equally.

on the second, we have three. there was originally two, but one lost internet for a while. me and one other were there from the start. we sort of do things equally. she set it up, i was the one who stayed up late adding all the categories and smilies and stuff, i also do a lot of mod stuff, and i can spot a troll a mile off. she was the one who makes most of the decisions to do with the forum, she installed the skins...the other is in charge of the arcade.

 

Dave and me on Pisoga, Dave and me on Setsou. We're a team pretty much. ^^

 

For myself I have generally done all the admin work on the forum side of things. We share a server with another website in our niche so I am lucky to have the help of that admin when it comes to running the actual server. Recently however one of our moderators who proved to be an amazing problem solver and who showed some interest in the administration side of things got promoted to an admin role on the forum. He's been around for a long time and has also been a moderator for about a year, so we have developed trust and a friendship over that time. Without trust I would never make anyone an admin. That is honestly the hardest factor when deciding to make someone an admin.

It is nice having another admin helping me out with the forum. I setup a project using vb project tools for us so we can track tasks, bugs, etc. between us. I found this works great since anytime one of us completes something we can see it at a glance and having a list of tasks to do on the forum ensures they actually get done rather than trying to remember everything in your head as a solo admin (been guilty of this before). It's also been nice having another person to solve some issues I myself have troubles with. They always say two heads is better than one. :p

I'm not sure I could trust bringing a stranger onto the admin team. If I ever did it might be for a brief time if we needed help with something we couldn't do, but at this point I don't see that happening. Before I even considered bringing a stranger to the admin team I would have to verify their background and credibility before ever giving them the permissions.

 

I am the only person who administrates my forum. I have learned in past instances that having partners ends up badly in the end. That is where I came in and bought them out.

 

Though I am the only one currently active, I've got another (highly focused on the technical side of things).

55,555+ posts

 

Well, depends on the forum. If there is a need for another admin, I have to trust him to no end. I am scared shitless about being locked out of my own forum.

I have run with more then one admin before, the hardest part is making sure you are all on the same page. I usually tend to delegate tasks; i.e. Admin one is in charge of boards, Admin 2 is in charge of user groups, Admin three skins, etc.

 

I keep a consistent three administrators.

1. If I go on leave, the other two shift upwards as Head Admin, and Co-Head. And can share my duties.

2. A vote will never end in a tie.

3. We all have different duties. I'm the Webmaster, Technical Administrator, and the programmer for the site and forums. My Co-Webmistress is our Graphics Designer for the site and forum. And our third handles all day-to-day administrative tasks such as forum modifications, and account changes.

 

No, there can be only one. I have 2 administrator accounts, one as a backup in case I get locked out of the other.

 

Now when you say "there can be only one", are you referring to just your forum, or do you actually think more than one for forums is not a good idea? If it's the latter, I'd love to know your reasoning.

 

That's interesting. I thought the super admin account couldn't be locked out by another admin. I need to look into this.

 

Either way, if you forget your password to the admin account, you can use the tools.php file which is included in the vB package download, to restore administrative access. There's really no need for a second account; I actually believe that poses an even greater risk than having just one administrator account.

 

On CF, we have three full administarters, and four more semi-admins (i.e. they have some admin powers, like user administration). On vb.org we have four administrators.

 

Does the USA have more then one president?
Does England have more then one king or prime minister?
Does Russia have more then one president?

As long as the admins can stay on contact with each other, and stay coordinated, things should be fine.

But I have heard several stories of admins getting locked out by another admin. Conflicts come up, and then a struggle for control of the forum starts,,,,,

 

That's an easy one: only the site owner, or one administrator, should have access to the hosting side of things, including FTP.

 

My admins and I share a 6 year friendship.

My admins have FTP and cPanel access. However, the only things they do not have that I do are: Super Administrator Privileges, Unalterable Accounts, Domain Account stuff, and root access to the VPS.

There is a lot of trust required to become an admin on one of my sites. Trust that none of us take lightly.

 

I have 2 other admins. We have the same powers on the forums.

I do control the hosting though. I take regular backups. I'm on enough that I can catch things if the worst would occur. However, its quite unlikely for the company I keep. If I became unable to contact, they could carry on.

 

So I take it it's not the latter? :uhh:

I guess you think there should only be one administrator, as implied with your analogy, but when I read "the admins", I just could not tell what you were getting at.

 

That's where I swoop in

It's easy to change super admin privileges and unalterable accounts with FTP :spin: