How involved should an admin be? - Page 2

What makes my job even harder is I don't just play the role of forum administrator. I also handle all advertising and marketing on the site. Plus, I actually code the backend!! The blogs, code snippets, tutorials, and link directory, among other forum hacks, are all my own creations. It makes it hard to decide what forum admin covers and where I cross the line into site maintenance and not forum maintenance. And it makes forum admin time very limited ;)

What makes my job even harder is I don't just play the role of forum administrator. I also handle all advertising and marketing on the site. Plus, I actually code the backend!! The blogs, code snippets, tutorials, and link directory, among other forum hacks, are all my own creations. It makes it hard to decide what forum admin covers and where I cross the line into site maintenance and not forum maintenance. And it makes forum admin time very limited ;)

Aah! That explains all the unique features that I see on this site. Keep up the good work. I like the friendly welcoming admin type rather than the purely business-like admins. And I will try to follow the same on my forums.

On a slightly off-topic note, I must say I actually don't code all the hacks on my site but I did create a couple of phpBB hacks myself and I also installed several third-party MODs/hacks on my forums by hand. I can never get the power of vBulletin, but as you can see, I'm a poor student from India who cannot afford the $160 lifetime license :D

What makes my job even harder is I don't just play the role of forum administrator. I also handle all advertising and marketing on the site. Plus, I actually code the backend!! The blogs, code snippets, tutorials, and link directory, among other forum hacks, are all my own creations. It makes it hard to decide what forum admin covers and where I cross the line into site maintenance and not forum maintenance. And it makes forum admin time very limited ;)

Maybe you should look at getting an admin partner. Someone who will be more forum admin based while you do all the other bits and pieces that need doing. Perhaps even offering to sell 5% or 10% of your site to this person so they have a vested interest in seeing it continue to grow. If you didn't want to go that route, then asking one of your super mod's if they want to be "promoted" to deputy admin or something similar. :)

Just thoughts :)

Well right now the super moderators have as much forum privileges to manage the community as the admin. So there is nothing really extra that a promotion would do for them ;) Basically, with vBulletin, a super moderator is an administrator without access to the control panel (to change settings, etc.)

Yeah I realise, but err never mind I just realised how old this thread was. Sorry to be dragging up old stuff

*sits in the corner and shuts up now*

It's okay ;) Discussions can evolve over time. All part of an online forum ...

However, I would caution that this community is built fundamentally around your personality Dani

I agree 100%. No matter how the hierarchy of the forum reshapes itself which is inevitable, so long as your signature prevails right or wrong that is what is important.

I'd like to thank you for those of us, or at least me that eat, breath and sleep computers a means by which to exchange ideas and information with other like minded people.:D

I agree as well, but I don't necessarily see this as a good thing. It's great to have a good sense of community, and I don't want to be an absent administrator. However, I feel that in order for a site to really grow, it can't revolve around the owner or just one single person. I see that as a big weakness.

That's going to be a large issue though. The site is named quite literally after you. Unless you hand over to another Dani or a cyber version there of (Dani the forum robot ;) ) it will become incresingly difficult for you to step back, or indeed go on a holiday. People will always wonder where you are, what you are doing etc.

In the short time that I have been here (less than a week) I have seen your posts sooo many times. Seeing you here so much has helped to keep me coming back. Not only that but you are always friendly, informative, and encouraging more discussion. To me that is a very big draw.

The site itself is great. The forum has many features, bells, and whistles. It would seem to me that on the backend you could afford to move things at a slower pace. I'm sure that you have many things you would like to see done, but at this point I personally don't see adding features to the site to be crucial.

So in summary: Stay active here. You probably don't have to be as active as you think (we always think we should do more than we do right?) As others have noted, You are a big part of this site and what makes it successful.

xcuse me while I go whipe my nose :p ,
Dance

Personally i don't think it matters to much especially if the moderators are very involved and do a good job. As long as there is someone to help members out when need be then thats fine. I am the administrator at a pet forum
( << url snipped to comply with forum policy >> ) and because we have not been up long we only have around 55 members meaning i am as you call it the "glue" that holds the community together. I don't think there would be much of a forum at all if i didn't join in lol. Anyway all in all i think if you have many members and good moderators it's not to important and it looks to me as if these forums are doing very well.

I think if a community is developed around an individual's personality, it is critical that person continues to participate. This has been said before by others, and there are plenty of examples out there.

There is nothing in the "book" that says you cannot change the personality of a site, over time to remove or distance yourself. Or you can do a cataclysmic change, with big fanfare, and create and announce a super-moderator. Both works, but both require very good finesse.

This is why my business site that I am trying to bring up (discussed in other thread), will NOT include me, but start with moderators immediately.

I think after a forum gets more then ~100 members that post regerly the moderaters should be incharge of answering the questions and the administrators should do the behind the sences stuff and only answer a few questions.

As I'm sure you now can guess, I'm definitely always making changes. Amazingly the design we had lasted for a year and a half before I decided go undertake this redo. But alas, here it is! (Still tweaking things though).

Our current system is the following ...

administrator = me = code the backend of the site, design / tweak the frontend of the site, add new features (and code them, for that matter!), do all of the marketing and business relations, sell advertising, etc.

super moderators = oversee everything, daily forum maintenance, handle community issues that may arise, moderate incorrectly placed, spammy, or otherwise problematic threads and posts

moderators = assigned to specific forums to act as community leaders among their forum, reply to threads answering questions within their forum, ensure all questions within their forum eventually go answered, lead up the group of regular members within their forum, strengthen the mini-community that develops within their forum

Admins should be very involved, I take as big part in my community as possible, and thats the reason for its success now I believe.

Well, as admins, we'd all love to take as big a part in the community as we can. If I had enough time to answer all of the technical support questions, and if DaniWeb were a better place for doing so, I wouldn't hesitate. But the matter of fact probem is that the bigger a site grows, the more behind the scenes things there are to take care of. And sometimes there just aren't 48 hours in a day!

And to balance all that you do with school must take an awful load of time

I think it depends on who your second in command is. If you've got a head moderator who can function independently on your behalf, then an administrator does not have to be that hands on. But, I think the forum members have to feel as if someone is steering the ship, and I'm not sure they're that concerned with who the helmsman is, as long as the site is functioning well.