A “Web Hostage Crisis” sounds pretty silly until it happens to you. Here are a couple examples of how the drama plays out and two important tips to prevent your website from being held hostage.
Scenario One: Held for Ransom – You get the website of your dreams but it all becomes a management nightmare because you can’t get into your hosting account to set up email, check statistics, etc. This can happen when the web designer hosts the website on an account where he hosts all of their clients’ websites. He can’t give one client access to their hosting control panel because it would mean the client could then get into all the hosting control panels for all of his clients. So the client doesn’t have access to manage their account and often ends up paying the designer an hourly rate to check items or make changes they could otherwise do themselves.
Scenario Two: Web-Jacked! – Your website is looking a little tired and you’re ready for a redesign. You call the college student who designed the site two years ago and you find that she has disappeared. You decide to use another designer but no one can get into your hosting account because it was established in the name of the student who is now MIA. The cherry on the cake is when you find that the domain name, which happens to by your own name (ie. johnsmith.com) was registered by the long-gone designer and you can’t even get access to your own domain!
These scenarios for disasters happen too frequently. To prevent them happening to you follow these 2 tips:
1. Register your own domain name. Domain registration is easy and cheap through many online services. If your domain name is for your business it’s good to keep this asset under your own control.
2. Ask the designer before engaging their services: “Will I have access and all the passwords to get in to my own hosting account?” Double check that it this is in their proposal/contract.
