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Contents:

1 Choosing Staff
2 Permissions
3 Recycling
4 Protection from spam

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Part one:

Choosing Staff


Staff is a very important thing. Your staff makes decisions on the contents of posts and who does what. Sometimes you get a bad egg for a staff member. There are ways to prevent getting a bad egg on your forums. There are some things to take into account.

• Don't take applications for staff, anyone can post anything on the internet without proof
• Do not give staff positions as a prize or to someone just because they join your forums
• Give staff positions to dedicated members, chances are someone isn't going to give hours of their time into your forums and countless posts just to become a mod and destroy your forums
• Don't give staff to someone just because they claim to be someone else always get sufficient proof
• Don't give someone an admin spot right away. That is the ultimate control of your forum. I personally advise not having any other Admins unless you are very, very close with them.

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Part two:


Permissions

Permissions are a very important thing. They allow who can or cannot do things. As a note to you if you are going to make any admins besides yourself, I would make a new membergroup and give it less permissions, permissions that could be the difference between your forum being hacked and not. This can save you loads of trouble.

Tips:

• Don't give the ability to anyone to delete accounts
• Don't allow members to remove their posts
• Only allow members to remove their topics if you have a recycle bin (Part 3)

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Part Three:

Recycling

You can protect your forum from losing it's topics. To do this we have to create a new board. Do:

Admin>Forum>Boards>Create new

Name it whatever.

I personally made mine Admin only, by unchecking all boxes, because this way, I am the ultimate decider in weather posts go back or not.

Now on the same area (Boards) go to settings and check "Enable recycling of deleted topics" The choose the board you just made. This will send all user deleted topics to this board, which only you/mods can view. Once again making it so you are the only one to view the board can protect all of your topics from rouge mods, because you can take the topics and move them back.

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Part Four:

Protection from Spam

Another way your forums can be taken over is through spam. Spam is the worst, especially when it is through advertisements for products or websites through an automated message and links. It stinks. I use these measures to protect my forums.

• Make it so members must activate their account
• Do NOT allow guests to post
• I have board specific moderators, who tend to stick to one or two boards so they can see spam when it happens

Some forums also like to have admin approval, but I do not do this, because I am the only admin and I am not available 24/7

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This is all I have for the moment. Please post your suggestions for more here.