What is an admin? Easily explained

In various IT areas you come across the term "admin". In this article we explain what an admin is and what you need it for. So much in advance: Admin is the abbreviation for "Administrator" and means an administrator of a group, an administrator account or a system administrator.

What is a group administrator?

The first form of admin refers to a specific person in a group:

• Admin is the short form for the role of the administrator. Sometimes this is also called "Sysop". That stands for "System Operator", which ultimately means the same thing.
• The admin is a special user of an operating system, a network, a program or a website. The internet pages include forums or wikis, for example.
• The admin has special administrative tasks and more rights than the other users.
• In a discussion forum, for example, an admin is responsible for closing topics that have already been discussed or removing invalid posts. An admin also has the power there to exclude another user from the group if they break the rules.
• A system administrator or network administrator, on the other hand, has more technical tasks, while an admin of a website usually acts as a kind of moderator.

What is an administrator account?

The second form of admin is a special account of an operating system like Windows or MacOS:

• The administrator account of an operating system is often referred to as the root account or super user account because it has to be created as the first account.
• You must create the admin account whenever you install an operating system such as Windows or Linux.
• With this account you have more access rights than other user accounts and can therefore edit more system settings and monitor the installation of other programs.
• However, you should not use the root account as a standard account, but create another user account. This avoids the risk that strangers gain full access to your PC through malware. You should therefore only take on special administrative tasks with the root account.
• When installing Mac OS X, a system administrator account is automatically created, which is named "root". An account with your name will also be created.

What is a system administrator?

The system administrator is the third form of admin. This is also responsible for the administration of computer systems.

• The computer systems can include, for example, an operating system, a network or a server.
• A system administrator is often hired in companies to plan and manage the IT infrastructure there. For example, you are responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the systems and install software updates for servers, work computers and other used systems.
• System administrators are usually focused on operating systems, storage systems, databases and web servers.

In another practical tip, you will read how you can run Windows Explorer as an admin and thus unlock more functions.