How do I lock out unwanted coders from my website?
Community Forums/General Help/How do I lock out unwanted coders from my website?
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| Hello, Folks. An intriuging story with an intriguing question. www.vivasabor.com I was hired to design this website. Originally another fella was going to do it, let's call him 'Mr. Programmer', and was going to charge the owner, Ruben, $400. I said I'd do it for $75 and got the job. However, Mr. Programmer and his weasily boss, who we shall call Joe, weren't too happy about it and refused to give me access to the domain name so that I could upload the site I'd built. After much finangling, I managed to get the access codes to Ruben's Godaddy.com account from Joe and Mr. Programmer, so now I and Ruben have control over the domain name, Vivasabor.com. However, it is still being hosted by Joe, which Ruben is not happy with, since Joe is holding it over his head that he's hosting the website for free. Anyways, to cut to the point, this morning I signed Ruben up with a year of hosting at godaddy.com, so that Joe and his Programmer no longer have any control over the site, but I need a way to block them from accessing it, since they still can. So my questions are thus: 1. I need to block Mr. Programmer and Joe from being able to access the website, so that I and Ruben are the only one who can make edits. How do I do this? I suspect it has to do with the DNS, but I'm not sure. I just want to lock the Domain Name to the Godaddy Host, so that it can't be hosted or accessed from anywhere else. 2. How would they currently be accessing the site? Via FTP? My request may sound harsh, but circumstances call for it :) Cheers, Jose Ruiz |
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| If you've bought your own hosting package, nobody should be able to access it without the password GoDaddy emailed to you when you set up the hosting account. If you used Ruben's existing GoDaddy account (which the other two people had access to), and just tacked another hosting package onto it, then your only option is to change all passwords and security to something that only you know. This includes login passwords, ftp passwords, email passwords, security questions if any, primary and secondary email addresses etc - any of which could be used to regain entry if you aren't careful. [edit] Oh, and don't take this the wrong way... a few weeks ago somebody approached me to build them an e-commerce website. They asked me because word's got around that I've done websites in the past (which amounts to a bit of HTML, PHP/MySQL and CSS). There is no way in hell that I consider myself qualified enough to take the gig, so I politely turned it down as I'd be out of my depth from the outset. Just something to think about. Last edited 2011 |
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| Ok, I was planning to change the codes anyways :) Many thanks, Dave! |
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| Change the ftp passwords to your site. Who is in control of the domain name? Domain names have nothing to do with the security of your site (it just replaces the IP with a name). I can see: Registrant: Viva Sabor Mexican Grill 8870 Navajo Road San Diego, California 92119 United States Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: VIVASABOR.COM Created on: 12-Jul-10 Expires on: 12-Jul-12 Last Updated on: 13-Jan-11 Administrative Contact: Valenzuela, Ruben ashvirtue@... Viva Sabor Mexican Grill 8870 Navajo Road San Diego, California 92119 United States (619) 822-7120 Technical Contact: Valenzuela, Ruben ashvirtue@... Viva Sabor Mexican Grill 8870 Navajo Road San Diego, California 92119 United States (619) 822-7120 Domain servers in listed order: NS63.DOMAINCONTROL.COM NS64.DOMAINCONTROL.COM IP: 208.109.97.35 IP Location: Scottsdale, United States Website Status: active Server Type: Apache So it appears ruben is in charge of this domain?. You need him to change his admin password with the registrar, if different from hosters (so domain cannot be redirected) and the ftp passwords on whatever server/service is hosting the website (so no-one can access website). Last edited 2011 |
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| Yeah, he's in charge of everything now (and me!). We just need to block out the other fella's from being able to access it. If this can be done by simply changing the passwords, then I'm a very happy wizard indeed :) |
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| Yup, in a nutshell : 1/ If you bought the hosting then so long as they don't have the password all is ok. 2/ If the site has admin tools (like a cms) then make sure any account they had is removed. 3/ Make sure only you (and trusted parties) have the password to the hosting account AND the domain name account. This is to stop Mr X with access to the domain name account changing the nameservers or transferring the domain to another account. 4/ Change any passwords associated with no. 3 to something only you (and trusted parties) will know. |
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| All that for $75? You're undercharging. |
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| I know. Another computer guy I know said I should be charging $65 an hour , so I quoted that price to my newest client who wants two websites, and he was good with it. I can be a right whelk sometimes :) |
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| Another computer guy I know said I should be charging $65 an hour On my current fed contract, i'm apparently billing at $120 an hour. Of course i only get a small portion of that since most of it goes to the company i'm employed to :). |
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| Another computer guy I know said I should be charging $65 an hour , If you actually knew how to do the things you've been employed to do, you definitely should. |
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| Thanks for the help everyone! It worked out swell. I'm just waiting to see how long it takes before I get an angry call from Joe demanding to know why his guy can't access the site. I am getting an alarming amount of vindictive pleasure out of this, which just goes to show how much Joe has pissed me off, since I'm never like that! Cheers! Jose Ruiz |
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| Dude, seriously if you don't know basic stuff like this (this is basic user level 101), you really, really shouldn't be charging anything or giving them the impression they are getting a professional service, or going up against a professional service. People pay for professionalism and will be VERY UNHAPPY, (as in sue you, not pay, refer you to consumer protection groups etc, leave very negative feedback) when they don't get it. It won't matter that you were asking less than 25% of what the other firm was charging. GET OUT NOW, THIS WILL NOT END WELL. Just give the guy his money back, say you underestimated the requirements or whatever and apologise for wasting his time. This may seem like I am being mean, trust me, I'm trying to do you a favour. Darkheart Last edited 2011 |
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| @Darkheart : while I might agree with you, what I would have done instead is try and make suggestions that would help him out assuming that hes not going to just walk away. Those would be... First of all, based on what you have said above I get the impression your really not that clued up on web design and development, so what I would suggest is that you ditch the site they have its really ugly and well crap, and I would install something like wordpress, it's easy to install, easy to theme, and once it's setup, a 5 minute conversation with the customer and he will be able to manage and run the site himself. He gets a top quality site and management back end that's fluid easy to use and hard to break. |
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| I stand by my comments, I've seen customers go irate and litigation happy when they don't like the results of REAL proffesional developers who have spent considerable time and expertise developing sites for them. Werdna doesn't know the differnce between an "a record" and a "b side" so I cannot see this working out well for him or his customer. Darkheart |
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| @WERDNA, please don't take what I say to heart, just some friendly advise my friend. I understand where Darkheart is coming from as well. I've been in the Ecommerce business for 6 years from customer support to development and personally see how quickly the client switches on you when they have a site in mind. They tend to get hotheaded when you don't produce the good they want. Also nowadays some clients are quite clued up, so apart from website, they would like you to employ some search engine optimisation. Most web designer provide good readable content which search engines loves, , eg not having the whole site in flash ;-) Whatever you do, Good luck with it WERDNA, but I just want to say Darkheart does have a good point Kind Regards |
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| By the looks of it, this is a bit more low key than working for some large food franchise, so I think he should be ok, and be able to avoid some of he headaches we might have come across. I think all I am trying to say is that giving negative feedback like yours will not stop him, he's clearly doing it weather you like it or advise it, the best thing we can do is try and offer him some constructive advise, something he can use that might help him avoid some of the pitfalls. @Werdna : my advice is to keep things low key, never promise the guy anything your not 100% sure you can deliver, once a customers gets in it their head they can have something its often hard for them to let that idea go, so don't say you can do it, if you cant or even have a slim doubt about being able to provide it. Also do not try and reinvent the wheel, your programming should teach you that, if the guy wants a nice simple basic website, then give him something that's nice and simple, don't waste hours and days of coding work building something from the ground up when you can easily just skin some third party app that does all the things he wants it to do. |
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| OMG MY EYES IT WAS IN HTML edit on a side note i think i have been by that restaurant before. Last edited 2011 |
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| HTML5?!! o_0 wtf? |
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| lol, wtf? I just posted an update to say thanks for the advice and give a quick update. Now I'm getting hammered. The owner paid me, he was happy with the website, Joe doesn't have a leg to stand on, end of story. I appreciate the advice and critiscism, but this post is concluded as far as I'm concerned. Like Taiphoz said. I'm clearly doing this (have already done it actually!), and the best you can do is give me a few pointers. Cheers, Jose Ruiz |
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| Oh, sorry i didn't read on that... :( sorry werdna. :) Have you considered Webs? http://www.webs.com/ They offer great hosting from free to dirt cheap. :) If you noticed my site is hosted by them and am very satisfied with their service. :) |
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| Np, and thanks for the link. |
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| Hi WERDNA, I think everyone here wasn't try to put you down, just offer friendly advise. One advise I can give, is on the site: http://www.vivasabor.com/index.html Blue text on Orange website do not mix, they kinda hurt the eyes a bit. Rather than blue, try black instead? Also even though it may not needed, why not put the company or restaurant name in the <TITLE></TITLE> tag? Search engines do index this as well. Personally for images name I wouldn't use spacing in there, eg "Home Image(Right).png" I would have it as "Home-Image-Right.png". But that a personal thing. Also the people you are doing this for may want to also put in Google Analysis for tracking purposes. See where people bounce to, where they are referred from and what they don't like. But this is an art in reading this and it does take time. Kind Regards |
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| Some comments. 1. Blue + Orange = no go. 2. Make some nice buttons intead of the horrid default-font text links at the top. 3. The background texture tiles very badly, with an obvious vertical line down the middle. 4. There's a huge chance to upsell their catering services, yet there's only a single line of text? 5. The contact page has their address as "8870 Navajo Rd". Am I expected to google to find the rest? 6. The gallery images are bad. To make them look professional they should be shot in identical lighting conditions (camera to Manual mode), framed properly, and with a solid background. A cheap light tent will help with this. Also regarding the gallery images, there should be descriptions of what the food actually is. Because I honestly have no idea. OK so not being Mexican doesn't help, but are all his customers Mexican? |
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| OK so not being Mexican doesn't help, but are all his customers Mexican? Over here, a Mexican restaurant's customer-base tends to be non-hispanic, even for restaurants that serve authentic Mexican food. Mexican food is a major part of American culture and something most Americans are very familiar with. Mexican's could be the ones at a loss for this place as it is serving a lot of Tex-Mex style food. Sounds like a decent menu for a Mom & Pop place. I would kill for an order of Carne Asada Fries. The orange background with black & blue text is damn near seizure inducing. GfK has given some very valid comments. |
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I think you should aim for something like this: The fact the owner is happy with it doesn't say much, since he isn't a web designer. If you can give him something that looks really professional, he'll probably be more than happy to pay a lot more for the result. |
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| The fact the owner is happy with it doesn't say much, since he isn't a web designer. If you can give him something that looks really professional, he'll probably be more than happy to pay a lot more for the result. Webs is way better than that crappy service! I tried them once all I got was a bunch of bills I had already paid plus my site was taken down with trojans within the first month! Just being honest here! >;-( EDIT: I see what you are aiming at though.. :) |
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| @nrasool I appreciate the advice. @Gfk The top three issues are valid. The bottom three won't be for long, since I forgot to mention the site is still a work in progress, lol. The Gallery and Catering page are just placeholders. I'm already working on something better. There will be detailed descriptions about each and every item on the menu, along with a picture :) I'll fix the blue text. @JoshK Very nifty looking site. I'll give it a look and see if it's what I want. |
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| Webs is better Werdna! :D try it you can delete your site and preview it @ anytime. :-) http://www.webs.com/ |
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| Oops! this is a double post! Moderators handle it plzzz. Last edited 2011 |
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| Will look into it Captain Wicker :) Cheers, Jose Ruiz |
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| @WERDNA: When I go onto your site I see but one book??? Where is the other book? |;-(D |
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| My own website is still a work in progress. Needs a complete overhaul, but I can't be bothered yet to do it, lol. My second book is about 4X the length of me first one :) |
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| I would switch to using a cms m8, try wordpress, if your host can handle php , sql and gives you database access then it's my recommendation for sure, most hosting companies give you a cPannel with a selection of stuff to auto install wordpress might be among them. It will make your website shine, make it easy for you to manage, and update, and it will just look and feel a hell of a lot better. Iv used many different cms's as well as 100% self built systems, but my hat's off to the wordpress crew it's simply the best there is. |
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| Yeah, that's the feeling that I got. Wordpress definitely looks worthwhile. I'll check into it when I have a chance. |
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| I'm not recommending a service, I am pointing out a style for inspiration. |
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| Yeah, that's the feeling that I got. Wordpress definitely looks worthwhile. Wordpress is the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to building websites of average complexity - and almost everything that is not a full blown eCommerce website like Amazon falls into that category. For example, at my company, we run our internal technical knowledge base on an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Wordpress server. Wordpress is a solid foundation and it can be customized until Kingdom Come with plugins and themes. But, as always, it's worth nothing if you don't understand the basics of the underlying technologies and platforms. When you're serious about all that web stuff, José, you should learn how to use a Unix platform, Apache, MySQL, FTP, DNS, SSH, SCP, the IP protocol, you have to understand the difference between clients and servers and client-side and server-side code, how some common Internet protocols work and it won't hurt you if you can at least read PHP, HTML, JavaScript and the like. Just being able to use the basic features of Dreamweaver or another HTML editor just isn't enough - but it's a mistake that most people make when they smell easy money in the web "design" business. There's a LOT to learn and there's a LOT of work that your customers just don't see and accordingly don't want to pay for. And to add insult to injury, you also need to have TASTE and an eye for aesthetics - most people, especially programmers, just don't have that and will only come up with results that cause eye cancer. To underline this with the most popular example: Taste, an eye for aesthetics and love for detail are --THE-- things that distinguish Apple from the rest of the entire IT industry, it has NOTHING to do with technology. And you either have that or you don't. These things are nothing that anybody can actually learn. To use another metaphor, like any other craft, you can learn how to draw and paint or play an instrument, at least for the most part, but you cannot be taught how to create - and recognize - something beautiful. There are no algorithms for that, and that area of expertise is not binary and cannot be mathematically explained. If you don't feel that difference inside you, then all you will ever do will at best be mediocre. But, as Microsoft has proven throughout its entire existence, mediocrity can still make you extraordinarily wealthy. As the former boss of a huge German TV station once said about the quality of his programme: "You cannot drown in shallow waters." |
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| Thanks for the post! I'm working on learning all the Unix stuff at the moment. |
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| I really am trying hard to get into web coding and the tech behind it. I have the design side sorted, it comes very natural to me, but i'm not going to promote my services until I have these skills in place. I think it's a personality trait I have though. I generally try not to attempt things, until I know alot about them. Some folk wing it and pick it up along the way. Sometimes, I wish I was one of those! On an unrelated note, the number of websites, of so called web design "companies" who's websites are an eye sore, is unbelievable... (also, it seems that all company names starting with any two letters of the alphabet, followed by the word design, is taken.) Good luck man. |
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| Yeah, winging it has always worked best for me. I tried the 'wait until I'm a pro and then go for it,' option, but it doesn't work for me. I like learning as I go along and taking whatever consequences come along. It's worked pretty well so far. I've picked up a bundle of clients to the point where I have to attend monthly meetings of the San Diego Society of Tax Consultants, locally I'm sort of a celebrity, my book continues to sell well, I've been made manager of a place I designed a website for, and am all in all, achieving quite a lot . I've admittedly had moments when I've been a complete whelk, but so far, 'winging it' is working pretty well. |
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| In a way, I envy you, sir! |
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| lol, likewise. |
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