Retrospective 7: Et Cetera

While we moved to a dedicated server well over a year ago, the time after the move was (until recently) characterized by a large number of gradual changes rather than the quick bursts of activity that I've discussed so far. The process of administration definitely became more complex, but in doing so, the issues we were dealing with became longer term in nature. The urgent stuff had been dealt with, but now the business of governing lay before us. It's very French Revolution, really, except without the guillotine and general in-fighting.

All of that is a very different ballgame. In fact, this gradual change is going to force me to abandon this "retrospective" structure altogether, favoring instead a more topical approach, dealing with each subject individually. I'm still going to be speaking historically for the most part, but story time is over. Now we're going to be talking about the real deal, what it takes to keep something like the site running on a day-to-day basis. Once that subject has been exhausted, we'll probably end up at something more closely resembling your traditional blog, but my fellow administrators will finally be introduced and will therefore be able to post, so you won't have to read my deranged ramblings exclusively from then on.

For now, a brief overview of what we're going to be talking about:

• Recruiting staff: My approach is pretty easygoing. Generally, if someone is clearly ready to be on the staff, they are promoted. There's no need to wait until everyone else is swamped before looking for help.
  
• Dealing with troublesome users: "Ignore them until they go away" does actually work. Sometimes.
• Conflict of interest: A case study in what not to do, hindsight lesson courtesy of yours truly.
  
• Backups: It's easy to neglect the importance of having up-to-date off-site backups. However, when disaster hits, you will either turn to your members and gloat at your awesomeness or shamefacedly admit that you just lost a month's worth of torrents and forum posts.
• The tracker announce: It's not as scary and impenetrable as it may look. I'll take you through the basic workings as I write one from scratch.

Hopefully that'll pique your interest enough to make you stick around for a bit longer. More to come, folks! I'll try to keep up this 5-day release schedule, at least until I run out of interesting things to talk about.