Is Your Website at Risk of Being Stolen?
October 12, 2022
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Have you ever had a team member or company build or manage your website? If so, do you have ownership of everything you need?
If you have full control over your website, you’ll own your own domain, hosting account and have access to your site’s admin logins. We have seen many clients who think they are in control, only to find out that they aren’t. It is a lengthy process to fix this problem that ultimately can damage the growth of your business or your website could be at risk of being stolen.
Let’s start with an example of what we mean.
Recently, a small business owner asked us to manage the WordPress maintenance on her website and do some updates on the design and copy.
We asked her for her logins to her website and hosting so we could do what was needed. Here’s where things got tricky. She did not have them. She had to ask her previous website designer, who she was not happy with, to get access. And… get this!!
The designer bought the domain for our client, so he technically owned it! And he had set up hosting in his own private account with dozens of his other clients so was not willing to provide hosting logins, because whoever had the logins could access ALL of his client’s sites.
We thought we could maybe do a workaround and take a backup of the website in order to move it to new hosting that the client owned. But, nope! The designer only gave our client partial access to the website, not admin access.
To make a long story short, we had to transfer the domain to the client, demand admin access to the site so we could get a backup and then set her up in a way where she owned everything.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story. If you are in doubt about what you have ownership of, keep reading and test your logins to these 3 areas.
There are 3 main logins you need to ensure you control your website account:
#1: Your domain registrar
This is where you bought your domain, like GoDaddy.com or CrazyDomains.com.au. Did you let someone else buy your domain on behalf of you? And do you then pay them? If so they may actually own your domain.
The owner of your domain name is the person who has total control over it. This means that person decides where the site is hosted and who can use it. They can even sell it or transfer it to someone else.
#2: Your website hosting
Do you have admin logins to your hosting? And is your hosting with a well-known reputable company that is local to where you want to get traffic?
If not, you might be paying a middleman who hikes up your prices and gives you minimal access to the settings on your site.
Ideally, your hosting could also be in a country overseas which will slow down your website.
We have a few recommendations:
Siteground.com and VentraIp.com.au are quite well respected. We also use more advanced options like runcloud.io that allows you to set up servers local to the country that someone wants traffic from.
#3: Your website
You need admin logins to your actual website. Do you have this? Admin is the role with the highest level of access to your website. This means that admins can control site-wide settings like the design of your website and the homepage layout.
Many people have a set of logins but their previous web team has limited what they can and not do. So that means you are locked into them whenever you want to make major changes.
How to get help to check that you have full control over your website:
If you are not sure of your ownership status on the above 3 items, it’s time to do an audit on your ownership access.
You can request a website audit here. We will find out who has ownership of your site plus provide other helpful insights on the key areas of your website you can improve.
Plus you get our entire library of website copywriting templates for free! These will help you know what to write on each page on your website to get more customers.
