Get your 411: 5 Critical Pieces of Information To Have at Your Fingertips
Posted by
Anne Craft on Thu, Dec 01, 2011 @ 02:57 PM
Pin ItYou know the old saying “Hindsight is 20/20” right? That’s a hard lesson that many business executives learn when “something happens” with their website. If you don’t feel very tech savvy, it’s easy to give in to the tendency to let someone else handle it. And as a web development firm, we see it all the time. A business needs to make changes to their website, or wants a new site altogether, and we ask the standard questions regarding gaining access to it. We often get a look like this:
Unfortunately, a LOT of businesses don’t have the critical information at their fingertips. Many need to get ahold of their “IT guy” or webmaster for their own information.
This can be disastrous. What happens if something happens to the IT guy? How do you access your website? How do you make changes?
Following is a short list of information you MUST have at your fingertips as a business:
1. Hosting information: Where is your website hosted? How do you log in to your account? What is your username and password? A note on hosting: If your website is hosted on the server of your webmaster in his home office, the chances of you gaining that information should something happen to him are slim. In a worst case scenario, should your professional relationship deteriorate, he could simply not allow you access to your own site. A safer solution is to host your site with a larger, reputable company such as Liquid Web or GoDaddy.
2. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) information: How do you log in to your website? What is your username and password?
3. Shopping cart provider: If you have a shopping cart on your current site, you need to know the name of the service that provides it, the account number, username, and password.
4. Merchant account: If you accept payments of any kind, you have a merchant account set up. This could simply be Paypal, or another provider that allows you to accept credit card payments.
5. Other third party widgets: Do you have an appointment scheduler, live chat feature, or other service you pay for to have on your website? You need to have all of these account numbers, usernames, and passwords as well.
How do you keep track of all of these usernames and passwords? We use www.LastPass.com. This is a web based password management system that is secure and convenient. And better yet, you only have to remember one password!
Having this information readily available is not just best practice, it can save you a lot of frustration and time when it’s time for change.