Operators
Every Web site on a single physical computer can be managed by the computer administrator. That is all most people reading this book need to know about operators. However, some of you will want to maintain general control of the system, while allowing someone else some administrative privileges to a specific Web site.
An account operator is a user who has limited administrative privileges for an individual Web site on a shared server. Account operators can administer properties that affect only their respective site; they do not have access to general properties of Internet Information Services or additional privileges in Windows 2000 Server. Use the Operators tab displayed in Figure 5.4 to add account operators for each individual Web site.
Figure 5.4. Specify Web site administrators on the Operators tab.
As a Web hosting provider, you can assign a Web administrator from each client company as an account operator for that Web site. The account operator can change or reconfigure the Web site as necessary, including setting Web site access permissions, enabling logging, changing the default document, setting content expiration, and enabling content ratings features. More importantly, though, is the configuration that the Web site operator is not permitted to change. The Web site operator cannot alter the identification of a Web site, including the configured IP address and port. This person also cannot configure security, including the anonymous username and password, and cannot make modifications that would be typically controlled by the server administrator, such as the amount of bandwidth available to the Web site.
In many hosting environments, though, even this limited amount of administrative privileges is too much to give to clients. Remember from previous chapters that you should give users only the permissions they need, and nothing more. If your clients need only to upload and download Web site files via FTP, then there is no reason to assign account operators for any site. The administrator can configure all options on all sites, and reconfiguration is rarely needed.