Just like I openly share my 30 years of experience in the wedding industry and stationery industry to help businesses, I want to share my 3 year experience as owner of Local Traffic Builder to make a very important point.

Many wedding businesses are now in the second or third generation of their website design or remodeling. Some of our clients have hired us to totally redesign their website and often to enhance it. This has brought a whole new set of challenges that I want to make you aware of now, so you do not have to experience this.

The typical protocol for another web designer to take over the management or redesign an existing site, is to gain access to the website control panel with user names and passwords usually set up and retained by the web designer. Unfortunately in some cases, just getting that user name and password has delayed the process for us to get started on work we do. If the web designer is no longer contactable this becomes a very difficult task for individuals to gain access to their own website. In other cases web designers have simply made it difficult for their clients simply in protest of losing their business.

Another wrong practice is having the web designer be listed as the owner of your domain name. Unfortunately, that happens much too often as they registered it for the client.

Under no circumstance should you be put in this vulnerable position, so as protective measures I recommend the following.

Just like you would want to have access to any other important password protected account, make sure you secure from your web designer the user name and password to get into the control panel of your site, the user name and control panel of the company that is hosting the site and the user name and password of the registrar that the site is associated with and make sure you are listed as the owner and if not have that changed. Have this information kept in a safe, accessible place.

As one more protective measure, ask your web designer to burn a CD or DVD of all the files of the most current version of your website, this way you are never held hostage to making online progress in your business.

If you are an existing client, just let us know and we will be glad to practice what we preach. If you want to be a client with a company that adheres to these ethical practices, click here