How do I protect my self ?

[TheWebWheeler]

My last host had it set up where nobody could touch any thing he did.
I could'nt change his avatar or his title etc etc....

When I tried he had a window pop up that said the member protected or something like that.:confused:

[Noppid]

That is a vBulletin feature. He has himself set as undeletable in the config.php. With FTP access, you can turn that off. But since he is your host and may have bad intentions, he'll likely change it back. That is to say if you have ftp access at all.

[TheWebWheeler]

NO NO!!!
you must understand He has been completely removed from MY site!! :D
I now have a new host & I'm up & running for about 24 hours now with out him..
But what I want is to protect myself from another admin or mod one day wanting to hurt me through the site so How do I block anyone from messing with me in my own Site? :confused:

[bassnutz]

As noppid stated already, the only way you can do that is to set yourself up in the config.php file. This way here you know you're the only one that will be uneditable.

[pkchukiss]

Probably you could ask your current host for access to MySQL via PHPMyAdmin, and FTP access to your files. From there, you can do frequent backups of your database and files, and be ready to be on the move in case your new host decides to pack it up and run.

But I don't recommend that you be distrustful of your current host, even if your last experience was bad. Be generally on your guard for the first few months; if things continue smoothly after that, things should be more or less settled, and you should maintain some sort of relationship with your current host... It won't be good if you always remain suspicious of your new host.

[TheWebWheeler]

But what I'm asking is this something I myself can set up in the ADMIN room?
& can some one walk me through the steps... I'm not too sharp on this stuff..

I do have complete control over my site now.
& in another window I'm looking at my PHP info But I'm scared to mess anything up..:o

[pkchukiss]

What I do is to set up a server straight on my own computer to do all the testing before implementing anything on my actual server. Yup, it is true that it is higher level stuff, because you need to be clear on the technical aspects to be able to configure the things.

The good news is that all these are open-sourced and free:

Apache Web Server
MySQL
PHP


The trouble is, these programs won't work on the default settings. When I first got them, I had to spend a few days making sense of their documentation just to get the basics up and running. Needless to say, I am having trouble with the security aspects.

Just to clarify, are you asking how to gain administrative access over your vBulletin board? I can safely say, if you have access to your database and physical installation files, you are pretty safe; if anyone tries to damage your installation, you could easily undo the damage by replacing the affected files through FTP.

[TheWebWheeler]

Yeah your right this is upper level stuff & the more I read the more I get confused & think I'll just leave it alone for now..:)