Super Admin and Managing Client Sites

Community Talk
1

Hi all,
When we started out building Concrete sites, our business model was set up for us to build and manage our client’s sites. We’ve stuck with small businesses and non-profits, which made it fairly easy so this has not really came up. Now we are shifting our business model a bit and I’m curious about how others set up the admin accounts when installing/setting up a client’s site.

So the question: When do you typically turn over the super admin account to your client?

I see 3 options/paths:

  1. As the “developer” setting up the site, you set up the “Super Admin” account under your name and email. Once you are done developing and are no longer going to managing the site for them, you would turn over the super admin by changing the email in the users section of the dashboard and having them reset the password.
  2. You set up the super admin under their name and email, add yourself as a general admin, and have them change the password you set up to their personal password.
  3. You walk them through both the install/set-up process and creating a user and assigning them admin privileges.

Thoughts?

2

In my experience, nobody logs in as the Super Admin unless absolutely necessary, or during development. Instead, everyone gets their own account with the appropriate permissions. This ensures better accountability and security since each user’s actions are tied to their specific login.
It keeps everyone out of trouble.

3

It kind of depends - it depends the level of power user they are - typically a user only needs administrator user at most, and you can still get yourself into trouble with just that.

Super admin mainly gets you page type default access and login as user access which is probably not necessary for most users. But if you are really “handing over the keys” you are kind of knee-capping them by not giving it to them, so something to consider and probably discuss with your client.