If you help manage a community website on OurLocality, you may have the Administrator role. Administrators are the most powerful users on individual sites. Within our shared network their powers are sensibly limited to keep everyone’s sites stable and secure. Here’s a quick guide to what an Administrator can do, and how that differs from the overall network management handled by the OurLocality team (the Super Admins).
What Administrators Can Do
Administrators have full control of their own site. That includes:
📝 Managing Content
- Create, edit, and publish pages, posts, and media.
- Organise content with categories and tags.
- Moderate comments and control discussion settings.
- Schedule updates or create drafts for review.
👥 Managing Users
- Add and remove site users.
- Assign roles (Admins, Editor, Author, Contributor, or Subscriber).
- Change user permissions within your site.
🎨 Managing Appearance
- Choose from the themes available on the network.
- Customise menus, widgets, and homepage settings.
- Add your logo, header image, or site icon.
- Adjust typography, layout, or colours (depending on the theme).
- Add small CSS tweaks if supported.
⚙️ Managing Site Settings
- Change the site title, tagline, and basic settings.
- Control how your homepage displays.
- Adjust reading and discussion options.
- Access tools for managing media and links.
- Deleting a site (dangerous).
🔌 Working with Plugins
- Activate or deactivate plugins that the network has made available.
- Configure plugin settings (e.g. forms, maps, social sharing).
- Request plugin setup support (a donation is normally required).
What Administrators Can’t Do
Certain things are centrally managed for everyone’s safety and consistency. Administrators cannot:
- Install or delete plugins and themes.
- Edit plugin or theme code.
- Access other sites on the network, unless they have a role there.
- Manage network-wide users or settings.
- Change upload limits, security rules, or backups.
- Alter any other user’s profile (this is restricted to the user in question).
These powers are reserved for the Super Admins, who maintain the overall network, handle updates, and ensure all sites remain secure and working properly.
🧭 Best Practice
Being an Administrator means you can do a lot — and with that freedom comes responsibility. Before making big changes, it’s worth asking:
- Will this affect visitors or editors who share the site?
- Could it change the look and feel unexpectedly?
- Do I know how to undo this if it doesn’t work as expected?
If you’re unsure, it’s always fine to ask the OurLocality team first.
In a Nutshell
Administrators run their own site. Super Admins run the network.
That’s what keeps OurLocality collaborative, secure, and sustainable — giving communities control of their content, without risking the platform itself.