Uh Oh. What if you get removed / locked out from your own community. Who can immediately step in?

[JoelR]

You're the community admin. You get totally, completely locked out from your own community - you can't access the server, you can't acess the admin control panel, you can't access your member account.  Or, to put it anothre way, what if you go on a sabbatical break for 3 months.  

What will happen?

Do you have a trusted co-admin who is on your account and can run the community without you?  Can you community survive for multiple months without your direct involvement?

Inspired by Drew Pontikis of Let's Talk Communities of Practice.

[Cedric]

This is a good topic. A problem I have seen posting about many times before. Their technical admin disappears or in unfortunate events, passes away. Leaving the community with no back end access to web hosting, licenses, or anything else for that matter. I always advise to have a trustworthy partner who also has access to the back end, in case something happens. Otherwise, you're pretty much doomed. There is no recovery process. And at one point, your community will cease to exist and force them to restart.

[Empire]

That has not happened yet 😛 I mean you would have a backup plan and a backup in any cases

[dismalbliss]

My old successful community is set up for perpetual existence. The fellow admins have my usernames and passwords. All they would do is have to update payment methods.

This is the ONE circumstance that makes going to Community on the Cloud somewhat appealing, as the rest of the Admin team may not have the computer geek skills that I do, lol.

[Shortie]

Luckily I have not found myself in this situation and I am thankful for that but I have in the past seen it happen to other communities where the owner becomes MIA for months leaving the community to run itself. 

I always ensure that I have more than one admin who has access to the backend as well as the AdminCP so that if anything happens on my end, I know the community is in good hands. For example, my other half is my co-admin who has access to everything so if anything were to happen to me personally or if I were locked out, I know the community is in good hands. 

[Maria]

On 10/12/2023 at 2:08 PM, Cedric said:

This is a good topic. A problem I have seen posting about many times before. Their technical admin disappears or in unfortunate events, passes away. Leaving the community with no back end access to web hosting, licenses, or anything else for that matter. I always advise to have a trustworthy partner who also has access to the back end, in case something happens. Otherwise, you're pretty much doomed. There is no recovery process. And at one point, your community will cease to exist and force them to restart.

You can ask your hosting provider to get you access to the servers, right? I cannot imagine a situation when a community owner does not have access to his hosting account.

[Destiny]

This is one of the many reasons I always have a co-admin on any community I run so that if I run into an issue like this, I know I have someone who has access who can help me regain my access.

I can understand why some people may not want co-admins for owners but for this very reason, it would be wise to do so. 

[Toni]

This is not a situation I have found myself in but it is always possible that you could end up locked out of your community and that could lead to something bad when you do not have control of the forum. 

Having a co-admin you can trust either someone you know personally or someone you have known a while such as online would be the best option to ensure if you ever got locked out, you could always get back in at some point.