If you consider yourself to be a non-technical site owner, this post is for you. Not because you’ll necessarily like what I have to say – you might not because I’ll be asking you to do some things that are out of your comfort zone! But, there are some critical things you need to know about your site that will protect you from losing it in the future.
A lot of people use WordPress because they heard it’s easy, so they don’t like to get into the murky parts they may not understand. But behind the scenes, there are a couple of things that you can’t and shouldn’t avoid, no matter how much you may want to. These are part and parcel of owning a site and are critical for you to always maintain control over it.
I’ve had numerous clients that come to me that are at risk of losing access to their sites because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. So please make sure you have the following 5 bases covered to give yourself peace of mind.
Own your domain
Your domain name is fundamental – it’s the right to your digital real estate. The domain name is what people type in to reach your site. For example, the domain for this site is webtrainingwheels.com
If you don’t own this, and have access to the account where it is registered, you can lose control of your site.
Don’t let a developer buy this for you under their own account. You should register your own domain name and have access to the account. Namecheap is an example of a domain registrar where you can buy domains.
Bonus tip: don’t register your domain at the same company as your hosting. Having them separated will give you more flexibility to point your domain to another host at will should you need to.
Own your hosting
A lot of clients have had their sites built by a developer who also hosts it. I understand why – it seems easier both for the developer and the client. The developer gets an additional stream of income and the luxury of building the site in an environment they know and trust. For the client it’s one less thing to deal with.
The problem is that if you have no access to said hosting, you are at your developer’s mercy. And things might be fine during the build phase of your contract. But sometimes developers go MIA, retire, get sick, get a day job etc. There are numerous reasons they could stop communicating or become unreliable.
So you should ideally have your own hosting account or at least access to wherever it’s being hosted. Since the site is yours, you should be in control of it, it’s that simple.
Make sure you have WordPress access
This sounds rudimentary but some clients don’t have full admin access to their sites. I know a lot of developers like to restrict their clients by giving them a user account with less access than a full administrator, so that they don’t inadvertently break the site.
But I believe if a client has paid for a site they should have full access to it. Preventing site breakage etc can be mitigated with training.
Make sure you have FTP access
FTP access is a way to access the files of your website without logging in to the hosting panel directly. If you hire a developer or anyone to work on your site they would need this access.
Many issues can be solved via FTP without logging into your hosting account. In terms of keeping control of your site, if you have WordPress access and FTP access you would be able to download and move your site elsewhere if for some reason you don’t have hosting control panel access.
So even if you don’t fully understand what FTP is and even if you never use it personally, do make sure you have the following info. You should be able to get this from your host.
- server/hostname
- username
- password
- possibly a port number
Own your plugin and theme licenses
If you’ve had a site built for you, it could be based on a premium theme. Premium themes will receive updates and at some point these will be critical. Over time they lose backwards compatibility with WordPress and PHP versions. Everything needs to be kept up-to-date. So you should pay to own a license for that theme. That will also give you access to their support and theme updates in case you need it.
The same goes for any premium plugins that might be used on your site. You might like the fact that you don’t have to pay extra for these but be aware that for support you’ll need to go to your dev and trust they keep it updated.
If you don’t have the ability to update these layers, over time they will fall out of compatibility with PHP versions and WordPress versions and you’ll end up in a pickle, with a site like a house of cards.