I’ve never read “Revenge of the Volkites,” but the illustration here suggests that one of the issues for Crash Corrigan and the Volkites might have been access.
It’s important that the great majority of other people not have access to your website. You don’t want other people to be able to come in and change your business website as though it were Wikipedia. But you do want your web team to be able to get to your site to make changes that you want made.
How can you get access to your website, and give it to your team?
- You may have a CMS, a content management system. This is a means of going into your website and making changes. You may be able to change everything, or you might be able to change just a few things. You may be able to give access to other people, or you may have to get that permission from someone else. Some of my clients have had content management systems and not known it, or have had them and not known how to gain access to them. Chances are, early on in the history of your website, you received an email with a link to the log in page for your CMS, a user name, and a password. This is the information that you or your web professionals will need in order to make changes if you have a CMS.
- You may have a webmaster. This is a person who has the power and authority to make changes for you. It might be your designer or web host, in which case you probably pay a monthly fee and should be able to find the needed contact information easily. It may be someone in your organization — it might even be someone who used to work for your organization so that now no one has access to the site any longer. If you have trouble finding the contact information for this person, then be sure when you do find it to put it someplace where you can easily find it next time. I often work with webmasters; my rule is to follow their preferences. If they want changes in a Word document, I do that. If they want to give me access and have me make changes myself, I do that. If the webmaster prefers to give your web pros access, then they will need the FTP information, including once again a user name and password.
Whatever means of access you use, be sure to give a high enough level of authority to your web team to allow them to make the changes you want made. For example, if you use WordPress, your team will need “administrator” roles, not just “user” or “author.”
You might also want to give temporary access to other sources of information. For example, your SEO professional should have access to your web analytics. You can set up a temporary user account, which you can then close after you’ve finished your project. However, without administrative permission, your web team won’t be able to set goals for you within Google Analytics; once again, be sure that you give enough input to allow the changes you want made.
You can take access away again in most cases. If this is important to you, ask for help in setting up the permissions so that they will be temporary. If your web team is setting up accounts, say at social media sites, then you should be sure that they give you access, too. However, your webmaster might not want to give you full access to all areas of your website or all accounts — it’s easier than you might think to break a website, and full access for lots of people can mean no accountability if problems arise.
As in so many cases, communication is the key to success in this area.
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