8.1 The Site Administrator

The Site Administrator

Each u3a (known to Beacon as a site) has a special System user, the Site Administrator, who has the username admin. When the site is created the Site Administrator is associated with a member. The admin user has an email address, which can be different from the email address of the associated member. It is not advisable to use forwarding or redirecting services as this may result in the loss of Beacon functionality.

The admin user has ALL privileges, which includes some functions deliberately NOT visible on the Roles and Privileges page, e.g. the email unblocker (see 6.1.4).

The Administration Role
The Role called Administration comes pre-configured in a site but has absolutely no defined relationship with the admin user (ignore the fact that the Administration role may appear ticked on the admin user’s System User Record - this is unnecessary).

The admin user has full permissions irrespective of any privileges given or not given to the Administration role and conversely even giving all privileges to the Administration role does not give it access to the email unblocker (which is reserved solely for the admin user).

Changing Site Administrator details

Important - so that your u3a receives critical service notifications, after changing the Site Administrator it is imperative the Beacon Team are notified with contact details (last step below).

To change Site Administrator, the new Site Administrator should ask the former Site Administrator for the login ID (which should be admin) and the password.

The above video goes through the following steps.

• Log into Beacon using these credentials.
• Go to System Users on the main Administration menu.
• Click on the User's name in column 1 that has 'Yes' in column 4. This should be the former Site Administrator's name.
• In the System User Record, if the Login name is not admin, please change it to admin.
• In the Member drop-down, select and replace the former Site Administrator's name with that of the new Site Administrator.
• In the User's E-mail field, replace the previous Site Administrator's e-mail address with that of the new Site Administrator. This can be a different address to that in the member record and unique to the Site Administrator role.
• Press Save user.
• Press Set Temporary Password and complete the password change procedure with next login.
• If the former Site Administrator is to remain a user of Beacon, create a new User profile with appropriate privileges.
• Do not forget to give your new Site admin the rights to access the demo site if you have one.
• Finally submit a support ticket with the new Site Administrator's name and email to the data.
  This detail is important as the Beacon Team use the site administrator details to communicate with you.

Revision History

v2	2020-05-11	Graham Tigg	Added video
v3	2020-05-31	Graham Tigg	Updated video to say submit a ticket to inform us of the change
v4	2021-04-28	Graham Tigg	Merged with Changing your Site Administrator.
v5	2021-05-03	Lyn Bossons	Sentence added to 'The Site Admin' about forwarding.
v6	2021-05-04	Graham Tigg	Moved to User Guide 8.1
v7	2024-08-24	John Alexander	Add to include demo site access