Several sets of usernames and passwords are imperative for making changes and updates to your website.  Especially for sites that are a few years old and were developed by outside developers, these passwords get easily lost – frequently the scenario is the employee that kept track of them has long since left the company or the file storing them has been deleted.

Unfortunately, the time you realize you really need this information is when there is an emergency – and the time it takes to track down the passwords ends up being very expensive.

Examples of such scenarios include:

• The domain name has expired and your website no longer loads. The domain name will be available for purchase to anyone.
• Content errors, such as pricing are on the website and are limiting sales.
• Legal action is threatened about content, and needs to be changed immediately.
• Employees leave under bad circumstances and related content needs to be changed immediately
• 3rd party providers change their services and immediate attention is required to keep your site active or current

Track down the following list of important website related passwords and store them in a safe place that is not tied to an individual employee.  I explain why it’s important and ways to track it down as well.

DNS

The passwords for your domain name registrar are often the ones to first go missing – ironically, they’re also arguably the most important. The domain name registrar is the company that you registered your actual domain name (yourcompany.com) with. These companies charge you annually for the registration, and point requests for your domain to your web host, which can often be a different company. Often these companies set up automatic billing, and just charge you every year – but if they don’t have the right name or e-mail address on file, notices when credit cards expire or other problems arise can go unread. More frequently now that websites have been up for several years, companies are startled to see their site has a domain name for sale message on Monday morning! Make sure your domain registrar information and contact information is current and you know how to access their website.

If you don’t know anything about your registrar or passwords and need a place to start, try http://whois.domaintools.com/. Enter your domain name on this website, and it will tell you who your registrar is and what contacts this registrar has on file. Then go to the registrars website and read about how to retried your information. Different providers have different policies. These policies are usually fairly strict – which is for our own good – if it would certainly be a problem if it were easy for someone to get access to your domain name and re-point it to their own site.  Common registrars include Network Solutions, GoDaddy and 1and1.

Hosting

Your web host is the company with the computer that your website files actually reside on. The domain name registrar points your domain name to the web host’s servers. Several different passwords can come into play with web hosts.

SFTP/FTP – Your sftp username and password is used to connect to the host’s server and upload new files to your website. If you don’t have FTP access, you can’t change anything on your site.

Control Panel Access – Most web hosts have a ‘control panel’ which is an administrative area where you can manage multiple website settings, including administrative contact information, billing information, email accounts and settings, mailing lists, databases and more.

Databases – If your website uses a database to store and provide data it’s important to keep track of the database password. Your developer could have set up a database to store website contact form submissions, product details, etc. Future developers may need this information to make changes or you may need it to extract data.

Fortunately, you can usually retrieve all of these various usernames and passwords by giving your host a call and providing some verification information. If you’re not sure who your host is, www.whoishostingthis.com can look it up for you.  When you know the host, visit their website, find their contact information, and give them a call.

Other Important Passwords

Many other pertinent usernames and passwords can come into play for your site. If your website is using any 3rd party vendors for content or services, such as YouTube for videos, flickr for photos or blogger for blog content, usernames and passwords are necessary to access and change the content. Review your site and see if you know where all you content is coming from – even if you’ve stopped updating the site through these services, you’ll want this information, should you need to make urgent changes later. In the same vein, if a content management system was used to create your site, make sure you have access to its administration section – sometimes sites are built with CMSs but never used, and having this information ready in case is important.

If your website uses any kind of e-commerce to sell products or collect funds, various usernames and passwords are involved as well – banks may have administration sections you’ll need to, modify settings for charge collection, and e-commerce software has usernames and passwords needed to add, delete and modify product offerings – make sure this information is current and available should you need it in a pinch.

Conclusion

Many businesses don’t realize how many different parts go into making their website tick. Each of these parts has usernames and passwords, necessary to make changes or updates to your site. Unfortunately, this key information is lost over time, and much too often I’ve been a part of mad scrambles to help clients find everything they need when an emergency strikes. Take some time today and track down all the information you’ll need should an emergency strike.