<!-- Ground truth: the Administration section itself (docs/admin/), the app
     sidebar's Administration group (templates/header.templ: Dashboard,
     Libraries, Podcasts, Hash Conflicts, Users, Settings), and the
     per-page ground-truth comments in this directory. This page is a
     directory; the pages it links to carry their own source pins. -->

# Admin Guide

Everything an instance administrator runs lives in this section. Like the
rest of Bookhoard's docs, pages tell you what to click — but admin pages
add the layer users don't need: **what each control actually does** before
you click it, what it costs, and what it changes. (The calibration, if
you're curious: *user docs = what you see, admin docs = what it does,
developer docs = how it works*.)

## The Administration section

| Page | What it covers |
| --- | --- |
| [Dashboard](dashboard.md) | The `/admin` landing page: stats, file-watcher status, **Force Rescan All Libraries**, live scan progress |
| [Libraries](libraries.md) | Creating libraries, folders, per-user visibility, per-library scans, deletion semantics |
| [Processing Issues](library-processing-issues.md) | Per-library ledger of items the scanner couldn't process — Retry, Retry all, Dismiss |
| [Archived Items](archived-items.md) | The missing-file lifecycle: two-strikes archiving, Merge/Restore/Delete, retention |
| [Podcasts](podcasts.md) | The all-feeds maintenance view: disk usage, refresh, delete files, remove for everyone |
| [Hash Conflicts](hash-conflicts.md) | Byte-identical duplicates and their resolution (merge reading data or keep both) |
| [Users](users.md) | Accounts, roles, password resets, the last-admin guards |
| [Settings](settings.md) | Every server-wide setting: key, default, range, what it does, restart or live |
| [Scanning](scanning.md) | The deep-dive: shallow vs. force, and what every scan button actually does |

The app's own sidebar shows the first six as the **Administration** group;
Processing Issues and Archived Items hang off the Libraries page.

## If you're setting up a fresh instance

The shortest sane path, in order:

1. **[Libraries](libraries.md)** → Create Library, add its folders
2. Let the initial scan populate it (or **Force Rescan** to be sure)
3. **[Settings](settings.md)** → set the **Base URL** to the address other
   devices will use, and check **Auto-Scan** is on
4. **[Users](users.md)** → create accounts (or leave public registration
   on), set roles
5. Point devices at the server — the [device guides](../user/user-guide.md)
   walk each one

## When something looks wrong

- Books vanished from the library? [Archived Items](archived-items.md) —
  they're almost certainly there, history intact.
- A book's metadata is stale or wrong? Open the book → **Rescan**
  (re-extracts that one item, sidecars included).
- Duplicates? [Hash Conflicts](hash-conflicts.md).
- A scan didn't pick up your changes? [Scanning](scanning.md) explains
  which scans skip unchanged files — and which never do.