Admin Guide I generally consider there to be five main elements to adminning a server. This guide breifly covers three of them, since the other two are really outwith the scope of such a guide - general maintenance of the host machine is a task for your host's support services and anyway has little specific to ET; while the decisions to be made regarding the approach you wish to take for implementing and enforcing your chosen 'rules' is something soley up to you. The other three, which are covered here, are: RCON - Remote CONsole, the most powerful admin function REF - The Referee functions built conveniently into ET Host Access & Software - Applications used for access to the host machine include FTP, VNC, SSH... Further, two related items are covered in-depth on other pages: Banning Players PB Player Power (Apologies for the lack of continuity between pages, some are much more recent than others.) Please note, it may seem convenient to add a line to your client's autoexec.cfg (or other config) so that rcon or ref passwords are always set when you join, or perhaps you might assign passwords to a keybind for a button-press login (thanks pH*Deus). However, do not do this, as it would be possible for miscreant admins of any other server you join to discover the passwords. All Seeing Eye has an option to input a rcon or general password in the "properties" box of individual servers, use of this should be fine aslong as you only put it in the properties box of your individual server(s). At a stretch you could have a bind to exec a .cfg which sets the password, just ensure you do not exec that file while on other servers. Remote Console RCON is the most powerful control over the running of the server. It allows control over all of the server settings and functions once the server is running - you can change any setting, ban any player, even shut it down. That said, in practice it is only really convenient for exercising general control and making minor adjustments while keeping the server running, but you should be able to figure it out if you really want to do something more complicated. Obviously, you should only give the RCON password to most trusted people who you wish to award such control. It's generally a safe bet that anyone you dont know actually asking for the password is trying it on and should not be given it. A general RCON command and usage guide-list is here, which is intended to cover the basic and likely rcon uses and commands. Referee The Referee system provides a convenient system for general server admin and match-refereeing. While a REF can do just about anything normally required to mamage a server on any given day, giving out Ref is much less of a risk (than rcon) due to it being designed and controlled specifically for it's function. Ref is also much easier to use since there is the UI menu's, and even using the console it is much more helpful (try /ref help, for example). Both these factors make Ref ideal for the first steps of your new admin. While Ref is less risky than rcon, the Ref function is passworded for a reason, don't give it out unless you trust the person to be a suitable admin for your server. You may find the REF command and usage guide-list useful, it covers usage of all the REF commands. SemiAdmin Semi-Admin is functionality provided with ETPro, and there is similar with ShrubET (shrubbot) and ETAdminMod, but I generally have the view that either someone is trustable to be either a Ref, a full RCON admin or nothing. Regardless, the various types of semi-admin are generally documented by their authors in a way that could not be improved upon here. Host Access Your server host/provider will most likely give you some method to access the server host, so you can upload maps or restart the server. This will vary from host to host, but is usually FTP and VNC or (most likely) SSH. Occasionally you get some odd web-based interface, hopefully in addition to the other ones. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is something you will find widely documented on many webpages, a reasonably concise example being on Wikipedia. Put simply, a FTP server runs on the host machine and allows you to connect to it via an FTP client on your machine, to transfer files between each other. All you need is a username & password from your host, and a FTP client software. SmartFTP and FileZilla are popular and free FTP clients. FTP is pretty easy to use as a client, put the username & password in right and usually you're good to go, if you have problems first thing to try is swapping Passive/Active, Auth mode (SSL, TSL etc) and more to the point check you dont need to fiddle with your firewall. VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is extremely easy to use. Just install, put in IP & password and control the server machine as a desktop - you do not need to have the same OS as what the server is running, or anything like that. You will also need FTP in addition to VNC, at least unless your host found some fancy VNC that also does file transfer. RealVNC is a well known VNC that is free for basic use. Remote Desktop is very similar in use to VNC. To run the remote desktop client put "mtsc" into Start Menu>Run, or make a shortcut to "%windir%\system32\mstsc.exe". You might want to check the options to set a fairly low resolution, 16bit colour, do not play remote computer sounds and 'Experience' 28.8k. All these do is turn off the pap and make it much faster to use. SSH (Secure Shell) "is a program to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over unsecure channels. It is intended as a replacement for rlogin, rsh, and rcp." There's loads of good documents and FAQs for this if you search. OpenSSH is just one free SSH app. There is a huge variety of other software you may find useful. For example... RCON: HLSW can make it easier to perform a variety of functions, including rcon. Similarily, RCON Unlimited can be used to send rcon commands to the server, without bothing to actually load the game and join it - "the program is designed to be the replacement of RCON Commander, giving you many more options and abilities". Or, try similar with All Seeing Eye: select your server, press F4 and put in the rcon pass, then press F8 for a remote console (the options are also there if you right-click on your server). I dont bother with any of the above except for occasional use of the ASE remote console. Restart Scripts: FireDaemon or ServerDoc can be ran on windows servers to automatically restart the server should it go down, or schedule other occurances.