Thread

Hi Everyone,

I get a feeling this is a developers/designers forum only. I am a client and I would like super admin privileges to my newly built ee site. This access would 1. allow me to really understand the guts of EE and 2. it would allow me to ‘turn on/off’ certain modules, like the store, among other things without having to contact and pay the developer each time.

I have set administered my own joomla and wp sites in the past and felt comfortable with full access privileges in those cases. I need this access yet the developer is hesitant, which I understand.

Does anyone care to comment?
Thanks in advance for listening.
JB

Really depends on the client, most don’t even want full admin privileges, less distraction, less mistakes.
But ultimately, if a clients wants full admin privileges, it’s their website, so I’ll warn them about the risks and the problems it can cause, but will give them full admin privileges, simply because it’s their site, and their EE license. Also some clients are perfectly capable of running the more technical side of a website with full admin privileges. But if a client ruins their website because of their full admin privileges they will have to pay me by the hour if they call me to fix their mistakes.

If you paid for the license, it’s your right to get admin privileges if you want them, but if you screw up, you’ll probably get charged to get it fixed.

Sounds good, thank you for the reply. So, in your experience is EE more complex than Joomla or WP on the back end? Also, is train-ee.com the best place to go for someone like me, who is not a developer but wants more info/ideas about running my new ee site?

Thanks again,
JB

Not necessarily more complex, it all depends on how complex your WP or Joomla site is, although imo WP backends are generally not as complex as EE or Joomla sites.
You just got to be a little more careful with setting when having full admin privileges, just make sure you know what your doing before changing them.

Train-ee.com is definitely a great resource, another is http://mijingo.com/ and http://eeinsider.com/ and don’t forget the regular user guide: http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/

Thanks again for the back up I really appreciate it. I’ll look into those sites so I have a better handle on everything.

Hi enfuego,

As a client, assuming you have paid the license, you have all rights to get full admin privileges. That said, I agree with Benjamin that EE is a little more tricky for people who don’t know exactly what they are doing. Definitely compared to Joomla/WP.

We generally don’t give our clients super admin privileges, for the simple fact that they don’t want/need all the clutter in the Back-End.

All the best!

Certainly makes sense. My concern was that I didn’t want to get charged for something that I could do myself, like turning/off on my store…maybe I’m worrying about it too much.

Thanks again for getting back,
JB

I’ve often heard of the approach of creating a super admin account for the client, and putting the username ad password for that account in an envelope with an “open if dev is hit by a bus”.  I don’t mean to suggest that be done literally, but that’s in spirit the approach i take.  I like the client to know they have every right to have a super admin account, but that they should really not have it to use unless absolutely necessary.

That being said - access to turn on/off certain functions can often be made available to the client with appropriate permissions being set at the member group level anyway.  Some are super-admin level only, but not all.

I like the analogy!

For me, I feel there is a level of transparency and independence I need, even though I don’t really know all that is going on in the guts of EE.

I guess it’s a fine line in that I certainly do not have the skills to develop/design an ee site from the ground up, however, I’d like and feel I need to know how to manage module positions, or how to turn the store off and on, or how to create and administer different groups for example etc. I don’t want to go to the dev every time I need something done…I’d like to think I can do it!

I suppose I get full trained up on EE all the way or pay a fee to have it managed, which is mostly what I do now. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for getting back,
JB