So I'm a moderator on a sports message board built on MyBB. When it was founded, we had a wonderfully active administrator and started to build a great community. At the time the board was built, the admin decided to do account activation through individual approvals to limit spam. It worked brilliantly and we built a nice community.
Until the admin vanished. And I do mean, vanished. I've sent emails and dug around in what I could find for real-world contacts. Nothing. The address registration is still auto-renewing, but the admin has abandoned the board completely. The other moderator and I don't want this board to die. We simply want the ability to keep it alive.
So, is there any way I can...
1. Gain control of an administrator account?
2. OR turn my existing moderator account into an administrator?
3. OR change the method by which new users are approved?
Any of these options would be acceptable.
LET ME BE CLEAR: I am not trying to steal someone else's website. I want our admin back, and I sincerely hope he's OK. I just don't want this site to die without him. All I want the ability to do is execute admin functions, at the very minimum including changing how new users are added.
The only way is to get in touch with admin, but as you have said, that's not happening. The host will not do anything for you either, Not that I am making a suggestion to do such a thing, but the only other way would be to hack the site, but most admins upload their admin folder under a folder name that is not like 'root/admin' etc.
If you don't want to lose the content, it will probably be a good idea to copy and paste onto a forum of your own and ask the other members to go to that, if the admins have gone for good, then why not?
Just be aware that some admins never interact and may have set thier status to invisible, so just be careful with the latter option. Also, if the admin has left for good, you will only have a limited amount of time before the site is up for renewal at the host, so it will probably disappear when no one pays for the webspace.
I would start your own forum and invite the members, that seems like your best option, providing the admin has definitely gone for good of course and the site is about to vanish.
Do a WHOIS search, maybe that will give you some idea of how long the domain has left, sometimes they provide details like that, as well as better contact details for admins.
If you have access to disable registrations, and/or disable all forums posting options, you can setup a new forum that is basically a link to your new site...which is
what we did. Then you are not competing with your old forum.
we had basically the same issue. And we had to end up creating a whole new site. We tried reasoning with the admin to give us server access. We tried getting the database, etc. Finally the admin just disappeared completely. But to no avail we started from scratch. We basically lost about 13 years worth of forum content by starting anew....but it was worth it.
On our new forum/server...we made it so there are 7 people with server access...all have root access and mybb admin accounts. So the situation would not repeat. We all take a democratic approach and vote on any changes as to not have a sole admin controlling everything. We all have host account login info and can pay for hosting at any time. We all have the the account to pay/register the domain. So as long as 1 of the 7 admins are still around, the whole system does not stop. and in the event 6 admins disappeared forever, that last remaining admin has the responsibility to create new admins from the current community at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
The site vanishing is not a worry we have. Whois says the site is paid up for another year. Unfortunately, there's a privacy screen on the whois information, and the guy I could reach before the privacy screen isn't the admin. He's only a friend who helped someone out years ago and hasn't heard from the guy either.
From solely a mod position, how do we transfer content? Because that's an option we're seriously considering right now. In all honesty, we would have done that by now, but we're unsure how to do it.
From a mod position you have really limited options unfortunately. There's no way* to perform admin functions or make changes unless you've been given access, the MyBB team has worked to prevent things like this from happening even if you have good intentions.
As far as copying content, you're going to have to copy text from the threads/posts but you won't be able to transfer the original accounts it was posted from.
*aside from the obvious, but really I do not advocate that, you're much better off just starting over.
Quote:The site vanishing is not a worry we have. Whois says the site is paid up for another year.
Yeah but what happens in one year? Who is paying the host? Who is paying the domain cost? Because without paying for both the site goes down. (well the domain not really). You could in theory somehow pay these, but then you still dont have forum admin status. How long has this admin been MIA?
You are in a limited position. The best method would be to get ahold of the admin somehow and let him give you the database, and/or admin status. Ask him for the host details and domain details so that you can take over. The chances though are slim. The realistic approach is you have to start over.
Even if there was a way I don't think MyBB staff team would even grant you access to the ACP just incase for security reasons. The only thing you can do at this moment of time is wait and see if the main admin returns, I mean sometimes admins can be away for a long time due to personal life stuff but it's good to have contacts like Facebook, Skype, Emails. But you did mention that you've looked through the net and emailed him but yet no response.
If the forum is still active with members etc.. Just create a topic somewhere like in the announcement or news section if you have any stating that the admin is away for a while that way theres 50/50 chance the forum won't die but who knows.
Unfortunately the MyBB Group will be unable to help you. This is because MyBB is self-hosted software and the MyBB Group has zero access to the server. The best thing you can do is use the Mod CP and add a 'global announcement (/modcp.php?action=announcements) with a URL to a new board under your control. Unless the admin comes back eventually the hosting/domain will expire / run out and the current site will be gone forever. You could always try to hack into the board but since MyBB has heavy rate limiting on the login system it's highly unlikely that such an attempt would be possible. And cracking a password that's 12 chars or longer is unrealistic. Sorry that we can't help you further :/
As long as the forum is still up, you can scrape the entire content into a new forum. That's how forums migrate from "free forum hosts" that do not offer database access (or only at horrendous prices). "Stealing" content is easy enough to do (in a way, no different what Google Cache and Internet Archives do, same for RSS syndication), the real problem is getting the users to migrate. It might work in your case.