Second Admin

[Darkstar]

Would setting up drive mirroring not reduce the possibility of rogue Admins? Basically, when a file on the master drive get's updated, the old copy is written to a second drive. When a file on the origional gets deleted, a copy stays on the second drive. Keep the second drive's access password protected, such that William only knows the key, and you always have a reasonably up-to-date back-up. Worst case scenario with a rogue admin would be the last post to each thread going walkies after a few hours of the board being down... Updates may also be reversed, but it's far better than re-building veirtually from scratch, and less time-consuming I imagine?

That's not drive mirroring, by definition a mirror reflects a 'copy' of the data and is used to protect against data loss due to hardware failures. You're talking more about a version control system really.

Daily full back-ups, and even more regular incremental backups would be the simplest and easiest safeguard.

 

[flash22]

yes the place needs another admin (root - or otherwise) it maybe worth considering promoting a few mods to supermods with limted access to the admin cp to rectifiy some of the minor issues IPB is one of the easyier boards to run

off site back up is a must on any forum due to hackers and Database problems this is all done server side tho and requires knowledge of the server cp, etc or whatever system the sever is based on

 

[Schmill]

Voted yes for 2 reasons.

1) So that William can have some help and not have all the problems / gliches of this forum resting on his shoulders
2) As much as we hate to think of it, it does happen, and thats the "Hit by a bus syndrome". If William was to vanish off the face of the Earth tomorrow, does ANYONE actually have access to all that would be neccasary to taking the board over? Or if they don't have immediate access to it, are their procedures in place? I know it's not likely to be at the forefront of anyones mind, and it might seem a bit macabre, but if anything did happen it would be a shame for William to take this great place to his grave with him.

 

[The-Wolf]

there is no need for another admin, all William needs to do is create a supermoderator
that can do all admin does without the ability to delete forums (which is what the last admin did IIRC).

supermods are easy to do with invision pro boards

 

[flash22]

there is no need for another admin, all William needs to do is create a supermoderator
that can do all admin does without the ability to delete forums (which is what the last admin did IIRC).

supermods are easy to do with invision pro boards

agreed takes 5 mins to setup the group rights and apply to the users as i stated above ^^^^^^ only need 1-2 root admin max then admin with reduced access aka a supermod

 

[Ace Of Spades]

Supermod, Sounds dangerous

 

[dnn3]

i agree with the wolf and also nominate him.

 

[pieman]

I think what is needed also, is some people who are able to help with minor problems, people given no title or power. This rules out 2 things, the often inevitable power-trip and also leaves you with people who want to help for the benefit of the forum.

In my opinion I don't know what goes on in the mod forums, but this forum has grown significantly since it first began, and you need to sit down and revise the structuring of the admin and what not. I'm not talking about revoking various moderators but putting in a structure that benefits what is now a larger forums. Just quickly running through this you need;
A low level of people - people to answer basic technical problems, people to sort out the troublemakers, informants etc
A medium level - if problems can not be solved lower down then they are resolved with these people
Possible people who are alongside William but not actual admin just experienced dedicated forum members who are not going to go awol when they get bored
William - William would only have to deal with the more serious problems, which gives him more time to work on them.

Now i'm fairly sure i'm ranting a bit here and what i've just said is a bit cheesy. But I do think people need to have a greater insight into some of the things that are going on behind the scenes, ie progress, problems, achievement, how the forums is run/works. Plus then you won't get people like me talking rubbish late at night

 

[TylerFerretLord]

Before you all go and nominate people, you need to find out if they actually know how to do what needs to be done.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

Before you all go and nominate people, you need to find out if they actually know how to do what needs to be done.

I VOTE BOGWOOD BRUCE...Oh errr wait thats a different forum.....

 

[Bignose]

I wasn't going to vote in this, because things have cruised along pretty smoothly the way things were for quite a while now...

But having search broken this long is virtually inexcusable.

If William doesn't have the time and/or ability to fix it after this long (Just a quick browse of the Board Announcement & Suggestions looks like 16th November it was first complained about), there needs to be someone with the power and/or ability to fix it. I'm sorry for the large type, but this is too long to go for a forum of this size and with so much good information posted to go without a working search function. I can understand a few days, I can understand even up to 2 weeks, but this is ridiculous.

I hope that this doesn't cause any hard feelings, and overwhelmingly overall I am very supportive of the mods and admin here because I think that they do a really terrific job. But, this is too long without a working search.

 

[jimmyringo]

Supermod, Sounds dangerous

'Supermod' .Isn't that Paul Weller?

Seriously though,I still really miss the Search function.

 

[JustKia]

OK, I'm new here but I'm not new to the building and maintaining of forums and such.
Yes, there's a lot of work goes in behind the scenes but to be honest I don't think general maintenance of, even a huge forum, is beyond the capability of one person.
Once code is working - it's working, it doesn't suddenly change by itself or just stop working - something has to occur to the code to stop it from functioning. Therefore the actual maintenance comes down to keeping on top of updates and such. Updates should be executed on a test board, not a live board and once the person in charge is sure that the changes are working, the live board can be taken offline, the new edited code can simply be copied over to the live board (and any database updates run as/if required [after backing up the database, which I assume is done on a regular basis anyway]) and the live board put back on line - typically resulting in only a few minutes (rarely as much as an hour, providing the test board is kept up to date and used to ensure changes are done properly) of down time.

How long have certain features been missing?
How many are missing/not fully functional?
Is the current admin working on those features?
Does the current admin have a change log of updates done since the features were last working?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yup weather we call the admins, supermods, tech support or flying monkeys i really don't care, i just think we need a few more people who can fix stuff on the forum, take care of upgrades etc i understand why william doesn't want to devolve too much power, nor should he, it sounds from the more technical posts above that it's easy enough to give someone else the access needed to fix things but not enough power to totally nuke the board if they get in a strop.

 

[modaz]

its said thats it's being talked about upstairs and an answer will come when it's ready to be said until then just get posting the usual way, this forum may have problems but believe me the other forums out there are a nightmare so theres not to much wrong with this one in reflection to those.