Giving and removing site access
Site Admin is the most powerful thing on your site. It is worth being deliberate about who holds it.
Granting it
Site Admin → People, find the person, and give them Site Admin.
What they can then do
- Change the site’s name, logo and colour.
- Add and remove anybody, including granting Site Admin to others.
- Add, edit and reorder the site’s pages.
- Create bundles and invitations, and sell places.
- See and change the card your site is billed on.
- Do everything on every course on the site — edit it, read its gradebook, change its price, delete it — without being enrolled on any of them.
That last one is the part people underestimate. It is not “a senior instructor”; it is everything, everywhere on the site.
The alternative, which is usually right
Somebody who runs their own course does not need Site Admin. Make them the instructor on that course and they have complete control of it — settings, register, gradebook, content — and nothing over anybody else’s.
A good rule: Site Admin is for people who look after the site. Instructor is for people who teach. Most requests for Site Admin are really requests to be an instructor on something.
See Who can do what on a course for the four course roles, two of which — assistant and contributor — exist precisely so you can hand out narrow jobs without handing out everything.
Taking it away
Revoke it from the same screen. They keep their account and their courses; they simply stop being able to administer the site.
Removing somebody from the site entirely takes Site Admin with it, along with everything else it carried — see People on your site.
Have more than one
Make sure at least two people hold Site Admin. You cannot remove your own, which protects against one accident — but it does not help if the only administrator leaves, loses their account, or is away when something needs doing.