I have a bit of a dilemma. The administrator of the forum where I have been a staff for many years, had less and less time to spend on the internet. So about a year ago, she made me co-administrator so that I could take care of everything for her, and I have. Last week however, the table of our database crashed, and no one was able to log in. I knew what the problem was and how to fix it, but I didn't have the proper permission to do anything. Unfortunately, the original administrator could not be reached, and the board stayed down for 5 days.

When she got back, I asked her to give me the information concerning our vBulletin license, as well as access to the server in case something bad like that happens again while she's away. She got offended and said it was like giving me her credit card information and pin number. I'm a bit confused. How do other co-administrators share rights/permissions of their forum? I would imagine that none of them gave up confidential or financial information. This is totally new to me, so if I'm missing something, please tell me!

This is an unwise move on her part. Having only one admin can be bad if something like this does happen, and they are away. She needs to understand the advantages of someone else being able to handle it

I figure if you're being promoted to an administrative position, you should be able to do more then just walk around with the title. It should be a partnership, where you work together

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The other thing is that she hasn't posted in 8 months! She did an upgrade about a year ago without backing up the database, and as a result the board crashed and we lost everything! One of the moderators was so mad that he left and got his own forum (now our competitor!) I felt too committed to leave. Beside accident happens. But ever since, I have been taking care of EVERYTHING!

That's why I wanted to have the FTP access and the license number to our forum. If we are going to be partners, then we should have equal rights/permissions as you pointed out. But she made it sound like I could retrieve her credit card information from the server, which I was surprised to learn it was even possible. When you have a co-administrator, how do you guys work this out?

Just to play devils advocate for a moment, when you say you consider yourself an equal partner do you pay half the cost? vB license, hosting, domain renewals, advertising etc.?

If not then ultimately it's her forum and her choice and there's nothing you can do about that.

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That's actually a good point. One of the reasons she promoted me to co-administrator is because I'm paying all the other bills (online storage, domain names, custom skin, contest prizes). I've also written all the content on the website. As for advertising, we don't pay for it. It's mainly word of mouth.

ah yes, that certainly changes the game a fair bit. It would have been better to have negotiated access to those things at the beginning tho.

You could threaten to pull out, the loss of hosting, domain and skin would obviously kill the forum for a while and cause a significant amount of work for her.

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She's paying for the host. I'm paying for an online storage which is basically a place for our members where they can download videos for free. It's the biggest asset of the forum (it tripled our number of members) So yes, if I take all those things with me, it'd be very damaging for her. But I don't want to do that (although I think I may have to, eventually) See my dilemma?

At the time, I didn't feel I had to negotiate anything because she basically gave me the keys to the house so that I could do everything I wanted. I picked a new staff, I made new sections, I even created a line of merchandises! I really don't mind sharing the credit with her. This is not a power struggle. What really gets my blood up is when the board crashes, and I can't do anything about it!

Right now what I'd like to know is whether or not I could in fact retrieve her financial information from the server (she paid for hosting by credit card). If so, how do other forum owner who have a partner go about it? If not, then I'm going to have to confront her. However, she's not the kind of person who'd make false excuses, so I really want to have my facts checked first.

Well it seems very unlikely, the software used by hosts to bill clients is separate to that used as the client's hosting control panel, it's possible they issued the same username and password for both but i'm sure if this is the case one could be changed.

Find out what control panel software she uses and we can go from there.

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Thanks, I really appreciate it.
I'll e-mail her right away.

Her credit card information shouldn't be available on the server or through cpanel at all unless she has put it on the server in some kind of a text file for storage which in my opioin is a very silly move on her part if that is what she has done.

I have a partner for 1 of my sites that is an add on domain to my domain. He made arrangements for our current hosting and I have no access to information on the account but other then that we both have all cpanel and server accesses needed to address any issues. If she is unfamiliar with any of this then I suggest you ask her to call the billing or sales depatrments for the host and have them explain things to her regarding this.

She also needs to understand you need these accesses to properly look after the board and make needed backups for the databases etc if she is not going to do this herself on a regular basis. If she doesn't want to do this it may force you into drastic measures.

She is either very unknowledgeable in this area or she just wants the glory of saying this is my website without all the work involved in looking after it properly. This is being very unfair to you after all you do all the work and should be able to do a complete job with the site's best intrest at the forefront which is eveident by your looking after it and what you pay for yourself.

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