Please advise

[gal]

The owner of the Light and Fluffy board, where I was assistant admin, has left the handling of the forum to me, but I have little experience in the day to day running.

Can someone explain how I can merge boards so that there are less to post on? I am not at all techy so simply does it, please!

Also, would the owner need to resign/cancel her account in order for me to access stuff she alone could do, or can I continue to host the board on my own? Thank you

[GregChapman]

Hi Gal,

gal wrote

The owner of the Light and Fluffy board, where I was assistant admin, has left the handling of the forum to me, but I have little experience in the day to day running.

Officially there isn't a grade "Assistant Admin". What groups are shown against your user ID when you click on your username and pick "Account settings"?

Hopefully, the list will include "Administrator".

Can someone explain how I can merge boards so that there are less to post on? I am not at all techy so simply does it, please!

You merge boards, by going to one of your "sub-forums" or "sub-categories" (to use techy language) and change its parent.

Assuming you are in the Administrator group, do this:

1. Visit one of the areas of your forum that you wish keep (I call this the "target" area.)

2. Either:

a) If the forum is NOT embedded in another site:
Copy the address of that area from your browser's address bar (Click on the address bar to turn the contents blue and do a CTRL-C)

b) If the forum IS embedded in another site:
Click the "Permalink" option towards the top right of the forum, and when the dialogue appears, hit CTRL-C to copy the pre-selected address. Once copied click OK to clear the dialogue.

3. Visit an area of the forum which you wish to merge with the target area and select:
Options > Structure > Change parent
(If some of those menu options are missing, you are not in the right group and don't have the permissions necessary to do that.)

4. On the screen that appears paste (i.e. hit CTRL-V) the target address into the field on the screen

Job Done!

Also, would the owner need to resign/cancel her account in order for me to access stuff she alone could do, or can I continue to host the board on my own?

All that needs to happen is that she makes you a member of the Administrator Group. Once in that group you get all the rights that the original creator of the forum gets.

You could then remove her from that group if you felt that necessary.

[gal]

It tells me I am among administrators

So, assuming I have two sub categories - for example, a picture board and a pets board - how do I couple them together, there are many topics and posts in both these sub categories, I don't want to lose any of them....can it be done in the way you describe?

Also I don't understand what embedded means, so can't do any of the above until this is clarified - how would I find out what is embedded or not?

Once this is all sorted out, I will find out whether the owner wishes to stay as a member or not - if she deletes her account, all of her posts go too don't they?

Thank you for your help

[GregChapman]

Hi Gal,

gal wrote

It tells me I am among administrators

Indeed! That means you should have access to all the commands I mentioned.

So, assuming I have two sub categories - for example, a picture board and a pets board - how do I couple them together, there are many topics and posts in both these sub categories, I don't want to lose any of them....can it be done in the way you describe?

Yes!  I've just done it with my test forum and I didn't lose any posts. However, my description in "Step 4" was over simplified.

In fact there isn't a single field on the page in which to paste the URL of the sub-forum, but four. These are labelled:

(•) Set a New Parent
    Enter the permalink of the new parent:

( ) Merge into Parent Forum
Delete this forum and move its contents to the parent forum.

( ) Make Child the New Root / Not Applicable
Delete this forum and make the single child the new root.

( ) Create a New Parent

So Step 4 needs to be expanded as you first need to "Set a New Parent" to move one forum to be sub-forum of the other and then enter the re-located sub-forum and do a "Merge into Parent Forum".

Also I don't understand what embedded means, so can't do any of the above until this is clarified - how would I find out what is embedded or not?

The clue was in the instructions. Do you see a "Permalink" option on your forum?  Take a look at this example of a Nabble forum embedded in a conventional web site: http://www.seahawk17.plus.com/forum.htm

The site has the typical main menu found at the top of each page with options including "HOME", and "FORUM". I have "embedded" a Nabble forum on the site's "Forum" page.  You'll notice there are additional links that appear on that forum, "Refresh" and "Permalink" towards the top-right close to "Login" and "Register".

Once this is all sorted out, I will find out whether the owner wishes to stay as a member or not - if she deletes her account, all of her posts go too don't they?

They do! So the convention is simply for a user to go dormant and not post or visit any more. As administrator, I just leave posts as they are as part of the record of past conversations.

The most I would recommend doing for a member of the Administrator group who goes dormant is to remove them from membership of the Administrator group, reducing them to the same rank as your normal users (These are probably just members of the "Anyone" and "Registered" groups.)

[gal]

Thank you very much Greg!

[gal]

Hi again - the owner wishes to stay as a member only, (IE not admin) and I have attempted to change her to such, but she still is showing Administrator under her user name on the boards and I assume has all admin 'powers' as well.

How can I amend this please?

[GregChapman]

gal wrote

Hi again - the owner wishes to stay as a member only, (IE not admin) and I have attempted to change her to such, but she still is showing Administrator under her user name on the boards and I assume has all admin 'powers' as well.

How can I amend this please?

Hi gal,

You don't explain what you click on and what the result is, so it is difficult to know why it is not working. You should do something like this:

1. Click on her username beside a post she has made.
(This takes you to a user profile page)

2. Click the link "Add / Remove Groups".
(This take you to the "Groups of this user" page)

3. Clear the "Administrators" checkbox and click the "Save changes" button.
(This should remove the administrator status from the original owner of the forum.)

[Fee]

Hi, I am the member Gal is talking about. We have both removed the check against administrator but it is still showing under my avatar. Greg, I have done everything you have stated in your post.

Also, if I left the board while I am still apparently an administrator and deleted my account, would the board still be there or would it disappear?

Thank you very much for your help

[GregChapman]

In truth, I have not tried what I have suggested, but believe it should work. It's possible there is a cache or cookie issue to resolve.

I feel I had better leave this for a response from one of the Nabble team. They should be able to supply a definitive answer.

[gal]

Hi Fee!! *waves*

Thanks Greg - as Fee says we have both tried unchecking the tick boxes and saving changes but the admin tag still remains. Thanks for your help

[Pedro]

Can see your forum?
The admin setting is not a check box, so I guess that you might have changed it at the wrong place.

[Fee]

Yes I can see the forum.   I clicked on add/remove groups and there was a box ticked that said administrator so I unchecked it. Which has taken it off my groups but still leaves the administrator under my avatar.

[Pedro]

Sorry. Can I see your forum?

[gal]

Hi Pedro - tbh I'd rather not put the link up here as we are a small private forum....although I would like to say that on our forum, the admin IS a tick box - the only bits that are not beside a tick box are

Anyone

and

Registered

HTH

[GregChapman]

Click on Pedro's username/avatar and you will be sent to a page where you can send him an email. That's the way to send a private message on any Nabble forum.

[gal]

Thank you so much!

[Pedro]

I received it. But who is the user that has "admin" written and is not an admin? I want the name at the forum to look for him.

[Fee]

I am Linda and want my admin status removed please.

[Pedro]

Removed.
It was like that because we consider the forum owner an admin. I changed this setting on your forum.

[gal]

Fantastic - thank you for your help Pedro