Need some website work done? You hire someone and then you pass along YOUR username and password to your site. Do you know this person? Are you comfortable with them? Even if you are, you should create their own username and password.
As a web developer, I have had a lot of people over the years just pass along their username and password to their website. While I will not be doing anything nefarious with that information, you do not always know the person you pass that information along to. Sure, you are going to give them Admin rights to change stuff but, you need to take it back quickly if you are unsure or do not think things are going in the right direction. It is best to create them a log-in. Protect your business. Your website is your online presence to your business. Protect it!
How can you protect yourself, your business, and your website?
The easiest way to allow someone to go into the dashboard of your WordPress website, create an account. That way, they have their own username and login and you can revoke it at any time if needed.
How do you do this? Let me walk you through this.
- Log into your website so you see your dashboard.
2. Moved the cursor down to Users, hover over that and click on Add New.
3. Add in a Username. Choose something they may remember – or choose their email address.
4. It’s required that you put in their email address. This is how they will get the notification they have been added to your site.
5. You can enter in their First Name, Last Name, and Website if you want. (these are not required).
You can generate a password, but they will be able to change that the first time they log in.
6. Always click on Send User Notification. If you do not, they will not know they have access.
7. The next step is a drop-down screen for their role. If they are going to be working with your website as a developer, you will want to choose an Administrator. This will give them maximum access to your site. They will be able to do all the background things that may need to be done, update plugins, update core files, etc.
Need to give someone else access? See below for what each of these roles means and what they will have access to.
8. Lastly, click on Add New User. They will get and email from your site telling them what their username is and a link to click to update their password.
You may want to follow up with an email to make sure they got it and can get started on your site. That’s it. They can now get to work!
Help! I lost my password.
If your web developer lost their password, you can click on the User, All User area and hover over their username. This will pop up a few options, one is to send a password reset.
Can I revoke their access?
Great. Now they are done with working on my site, and I would like to revoke their access.
Easy enough. Go to User, All Users. Hover over their name and choose Delete. You will need to confirm deletion and their access will be revoked. In case you are wondering, they will not get an email telling them you revoked their access.
What are those roles? And what do they mean?
Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. What are they and what’s the difference? There is great documentation from WordPress.org on exactly what each one can do. You can view that here.
Here are the basics broken down:
The administrator has full access to your site. They can update WordPress, plugins, add pages, delete pages, manage everything on your site itself. From the WordPress Dashboard they do NOT have access to your host so they cannot change any host information.
Editor has rights to approve posts. They can delete pages, delete posts, edit posts and pages, they can publish posts and pages and they can manage links and categories. They can moderate comments. Yes, the Admin can do all this as well. What an Editor cannot do is update plugins, update core files, add users to the site.
Author mainly deals with only posts. They can edit, publish, and delete posts.
Contributor can edit posts and delete posts, but they cannot publish posts.
Subscriber can only read the posts. They cannot make any changes to the site at all.
Next time you need help with your website, let us know. We don’t just build them but maintain them too. If you are just looking for a quick update of your site plugins or need to update to the latest WordPress, let us know here and we’ll be happy to help out.