Who Runs Your Website Show?
I’ve had clients come to me with an assortment of problems. In more than one case, they were not in control of their domain name and needed help getting it back. Having to prove to GoDaddy or another hosting platform that they own their own company.
I’ve had clients tell me their programmer has locked them out or deleted their files, and they are back to nothing online. Or their programmer has just disappeared without a trace.
But this week something came up that I just had to share.
A client has me building SEO (search engine optimization) into their WordPress website which is already live. I start to look around and I see in the general settings, the email associated with the website is not my client. This person is also the main administrator. I ask my client who this is and advise him that the email (owner of the site) should be him. He should be the admin of his own site.
He writes back and says (I kid you not), “I don’t know who that is.”
Seriously now, go to the general settings inside your WordPress (or another CMS) website and look at whose email is written in there. Is it you or your programmer? Do you at least know, and more importantly, trust that person? Even if you do, the email controlling the website should still be YOU!
Now, the next thing is to edit who the main administrator is, and it should be YOU! You cannot change the “admin” username, but you can adjust it to your name, email and should change the password. (I always write the password down first in front of me, before changing it, so I’m sure what it is. Make it really complex, with odd capital letters, numbers, and symbols.)
You can also add a new user if you need website maintenance and don’t want to share your login, making them an editor. With editor status they can work on content, but don’t have access to important parts of the backend. You can also assign them as an administrator, if they are to have complete access.
I cannot stress how important it is to be in control of your own website.
Let’s say you have a contact form on your website. Every time someone writes in that form and hits the submit button, the email is going to whose email was listed in the settings. So, if that email is not you, you are not getting those messages, and potentially losing clients and sales!
Login now and be sure of who runs your online show!
Have any website issues you’d like to share? Just post them below.