Having trouble with your website designer? Here are some steps to avoid losing one of the most valuable assets in your business – your website.
I felt compelled to write this article because, in the last few weeks, no less than three of my clients have been facing problems with their website or blog, thanks to their website design company.
Here are some of the issues you might face with your website designer.
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#1. Your website designer takes down your website without warning
This could be due to any issue, from non-payment of dues to non-renewal of a domain or hosting.
My client’s website designer actually took down their website while we were promoting it, causing serious issues with respect to their credibility.
What to do in this case:
Before you pay your designer, ensure that they send you all the login information for your website—from your domain registrar login to your web hosting (Cpanel) login.
If your designer goes rogue and threatens to take down your site, change your passwords immediately. Hopefully, the email used to create the domain and hosting accounts also belong to you and not to them.
#2. Your website designer turns out to be incompetent
One of my client’s blogs was completely deleted, destroying months of hard work in writing, publishing, and promoting the blog. All their Google rankings have been wiped out along with the blog.
When asked, the designer finally admitted that they didn’t know what they were doing and could not get the blog back up and running.
This happens when you hire an incompetent designer, either because you knew them from way back when, or because they’re your “friend.”
What to do in this case:
If you have the login information for your Cpanel and blog, hire someone with WordPress experience to use the backup to get your site and blog up and running.
Always share a copy of your domain and Cpanel logins with more than one person in your close circle.
#3. Your website designer dies
This is probably the worst-case scenario, but it happened to a client of mine, leading to a lot of problems for his business.
What to do in this case:
If you know the family of your designer, you can get in touch with them and request (or pay, if required) for them to forward you all the emails mentioning your domain from their loved one’s email inbox.
You should find the domain registrar and hosting information buried in these emails. You can also write to the domain registrar and website host, informing them of the demise of your designer and sending them proof of ownership of the domain.
They might be willing to transfer control to you. If that does not work, try hiring an ethical hacker to hack into your website and access your information.
What do you need for a website?
To get your website up and running, you’ll need two things:
#1. A domain
Once you choose your domain registrar, it’s a nuisance to change it, so find a good one and stick with it. Remember to renew your domain every year or pay for a number of years at once.
#2. A hosting package
With hosting rights, you get the right to host the website on a server. It’s like a home where your website can live, and this is where you create the look and content of the website.
You can buy WordPress hosting from a web host that is reliable and reasonably priced.
How to manage your own website
When setting up your website, here are some guidelines to follow to ensure that you never face the above dilemmas with your own designer.
#1. Create your accounts using your own email
Buy your domain yourself from a reliable domain registrar, using an email address that belongs to you.
Do the same for your hosting package after consulting with your website designer to understand the kind of hosting you require.
#2. Keep your login information safe
Save your login information for both your domain registrar and your web host, in your email inbox, and in a file on your computer. Remember where you have stored it.
Share your login information with one or two trusted people in your close circle, save a copy of it in Google Drive, and add your family members to your Google family account.
If you lose it or format your computer, you can always retrieve it from the cloud.
#3. Hire a reliable website designer
This should be obvious, but if you hire a website designer based on sketchy information, you’re heading for trouble.
Your website designer is one of the most important people managing your business presence, and you need to hire them based on their past work, skills, and troubleshooting experience.
It’s easy to hire a freelance WordPress designer online. The benefit of doing that is that you can access top-notch talent, and all payments and disputes happen via the platform itself, so there’s less chance of your designer going rogue.
Of course, after the work is completed, remember to change your Cpanel and WordPress passwords.
If you hire a website designer through word-of-mouth, just checking out their portfolio is not enough. Also, see whether they provide good customer service and are available when problems arise.
If they can provide a few good testimonials or references you can speak with (to understand if their former clients are happy with them), that’s even better.
#4. Press the reset button
If you face any of the issues above, you should be able to log in to both accounts and change your password. Or hire a new designer to reinstall your website and blog using the backups on your server.
As an aside, always pay your web host for backups in case the worst happens. Or install the Jetpack plugin and pay a small amount for backups.
#5. Learn how to set up and manage your own website
It’s not rocket science, especially if you learn WordPress. You should at least understand how to log in and reset your passwords, if not learn how to set up and manage your website and blog.
In conclusion, a little caution goes a long way when it comes to handing over the keys to your kingdom (*your website) to someone else.
Proceed carefully and keep the guidelines above in mind when you set up a website for your business.
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© 2016 – 2023, Priya Florence Shah. All rights reserved.
Priya Florence Shah is a bestselling author and an award-winning blogger. Check out her book on emotional self-care for women. Priya writes short stories and poetry and chills with her two-legged and four-legged kids in her spare time.
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Excellent advice! I’ll just add that it’s not as hard as the neophyte’s fear may indicate. Back in 1998, my boss said, “We need a website. Learn HTML and write one.” Then he gave me one of those free AOL disks that they mailed out all the time. So I leaped into the great unknown and mastered a new skill which I’ve been using for my own company since 1999. It’s often more efficient to outsource tasks like this, but it’s also important to know enough to — like this article says — manage your website designer.
Thanks for the feedback, Michael. I look forward to the day when it will be mandatory for everyone to have some knowledge of coding, or at least basic website design.
One should always have basic knowledge about how websites work, otherwise, you are destined to lose either money or the whole business itself. I have also seen people got their accounts created by some other people and after some time they demanded money for giving account credentials.
I agree, Eliana. All business owners need to be in control of their online assets.