Mythbuster Monday: “Knowing our website’s login details is all we need”

Often when new clients ask us to redesign their website, they give us their login details for the current website, but they don’t have access to their hosting or domain information. We need that extra information in order to back up the existing site and upload the new one. And, of course, it’s important that business owners know this information for their own purposes.

Truth be told, we even need hosting login information for search engine optimisation or to sign you up to a new provider. So the information you should have about your website are:

• The user names and passwords to your CMS (such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or CMS Made Simple).
• The login details for your hosting accounts.
• The login details for your domain names.
• The login details for your FTP account (this may be the same as your hosting details in many cases).

With this information we can access your website, redesign it and back it up.

This is why knowing this information and keeping it safe is vitally important to the integrity of your website. The details of how to log in to your FTP account you may never actually use yourself, but along with the login details for your CMS and for your hosting account must be kept safe and secure.

Make sure these login details are not the same as well and if you need to change them, for example, to lock out an employee who has left your company, be sure to change both your CMS and your hosting login details.

Here are a few other tips for keeping your login details safe

• Don’t duplicate usernames and passwords; make sure they are distinctly different.
• Make sure that your passwords are not easy to identify. The more complex and unique the better.
• Don’t store this information on your computer where hackers or disgruntled employees might find it.
• Don’t rely on employees to remember this information or to keep it safe for you. If they leave you won’t be able to login to your website and they might not keep these details as safe as you would like anyway.
• Give everyone their own login details, so you know who has logged in and when. This is also useful for when an employee leaves the business — you can simply disable their account without affecting anyone else.

Also, remember, anyone with your hosting account login details can potentially shut down your website and emails. So once you have given these details to someone, once they have finished their job and no longer need access to your website, change your login details and keep your website safe and secure at all times.

If you don’t have your hosting and FTP login details and you want to change provider, sign up for search engine optimisation or even have a new website designed, then obtaining these details can be an extremely long-winded process. We offer a consolidation service whereby we can gather all of that information for you. You don’t have to move any of your accounts over to us; the service is purely to help you pull everything together.

For more information on website security or website design in Brisbane, call GO Creative on (07) 3333 2932 or request a free quote online.