The admin panel
Everything about running the site happens in the admin panel: videos and members, settings, plugins, themes and the background work. This chapter is a short tour, followed by what to set on the first day.
Getting in
Open https://your-site/admin/ (the shorter https://your-site/admin-cp leads to the same place) and sign in with the administrator account from the installation. Members whose role is Admin or Moderator, or a role of your own with the right Open the admin panel, can open it too; roles are made under Admin → Users → Roles.
The panel has its own light and dark mode, separate from the public site, and opens in light.
The top bar
- The menu button on the left folds the side menu away for more room, and the panel remembers that. On a phone it opens the menu.
- Your logo with the words Admin panel leads back to the dashboard.
- The search box finds a video by its title, its id or its channel. Press
/anywhere in the panel to jump into it. - The bell - see below.
- The broom (administrators only) clears the temporary cache. It is always safe: scraps, locks and unfinished uploads go, your videos and settings stay.
- The light/dark button switches the panel between the two. Your browser remembers the choice; the starting mode is Default mode for this panel on Admin → Settings → General.
- View site, Sign out, and your own name, which opens your account settings.
The side menu
| Group | Pages |
|---|---|
| Overview | Dashboard, Watching now, Notifications |
| Content | Videos, Comments, Categories, Blog, Pages, What's new, Reports, Promotions |
| People | Users, Packages, Verification requests, Monetization requests, Money, Support, Contact |
| System | Media & FFmpeg, Cron jobs, System status, Themes, Settings, Plugins, License |
| Plugins | the pages of the plugins that are switched on |
A small number beside Support, Contact, Notifications, the two request pages and Promotions counts what is waiting there. A plugin with several pages gets its own heading under Plugins. The version of AIO Video is printed at the foot of the menu.
Settings has its own tabs across the top: General, Content, Who may watch, Accounts, Home page, Downloads, SEO & sitemap, Speed & security, E-mail, Languages, Support, Updates, Media and Your code. They are explained in Settings.
The bell
The number on the bell adds up everything that needs a look. Opening it shows two lists:
- Needs a look - videos and articles waiting for approval, open reports, support tickets and contact messages waiting, withdrawals to pay, failed conversions, verification, monetization and promotion requests, a newer version of the script, a licence that needs attention, a disk that is nearly full, plugin faults. Each line leads to the page where you deal with it.
- Lately - what happened on the site: new members, new tickets, reports and the like.
See everything opens Admin → Notifications, with Needs a look at the top and every past happening below it, page by page.
The dashboard
- A warning at the top when videos are waiting for approval or reports are open, and a line about the conversion queue when videos are being converted or a conversion failed.
- Four figures: Published videos, Members, Total views and Comments.
- Views, last 14 days as a chart.
- Newest videos: change a video's state (Published, Waiting, Blocked) straight from its row, or use Edit, See, Feature and Delete.
- Newest members: change a member's role from the row; the Actions menu can send the confirmation e-mail, verify the channel, block, delete, or open their videos and channel.
- This installation: the script version, the licence state with a Manage link, how many plugins are on, whether FFmpeg was found, whether a file server is in use, and the PHP version.
The first day
Work through this list once, top to bottom.
- Admin → System status. Every line should say Good. Fix means something is missing that a part of the site needs; your host can usually switch it on. See Requirements.
- Admin → Settings → General. Site name, Tagline, Description (search engines read this), Contact e-mail and Support e-mail; your Logo, Favicon and Brand colour; Default mode for the site and Default mode for this panel. Under Addresses, press Check now to see that Clean addresses work on your server.
- Admin → Settings → E-mail. Choose SMTP (better, and lands in the inbox) with a mailbox on your own domain, save, then use Send a test.
- Admin → Cron jobs. Add the one cron line and wait until the notice at the top is green. See Scheduled jobs.
- Admin → Media & FFmpeg. If your server has FFmpeg, enter its paths and pick the sizes to make. See Video conversion.
- Admin → Settings → Content. Open registration, Uploads open, Approve before publishing, comments, and Largest upload (MB).
- Admin → Pages. Replace the placeholder text of About us, Terms of use, Privacy policy and Contact.
- Admin → Categories. Keep, rename or remove the 17 categories the installer made.
- Admin → Themes. Choose AIO Classic or the YouTube-like YouTube theme and set it up. See Themes.
- Admin → Plugins. Switch on what you want - Player, Shorts, Live, Messages and the others. Each plugin then adds its own pages to the menu.
Still building the site? Admin → Settings → Content → Maintenance → Close the site shows visitors a short "back shortly" page while you work. Administrators see the site as normal, and signing in keeps working, so you can never lock yourself out.