Getting organic traffic, related views, and conversion sales are matters that constantly tickle the mind of a website owner. Others are erratic on adding new videos, photos, contents, and other functionality. This is a normal behavior of website owners, especially if you are new to the online game of marketing and earning money.
But there are just things that can really give you problems.
Not having enough control or management over your website is frustrating, if not excruciatingly bad. I am pretty sure, you are already in the brink of bursting. Before you do that, keep your cool. Check out the following “pains”, and see yourself in the line.
- You have been happy with how the website looks, but you are not satisfied with the related and organic traffic the website is getting. You want to bring it to another level. When you phoned your web designer and requested for the necessary tweak, you were asked to pay $250 for that service, aside from the monthly maintenance fee. You are totally stunned. Far worst, they could only possibly make the changes two weeks or so.
Here you are, thinking that time is an essence of business. You are asked to pay a hefty amount for adding tweaks and updating your own website, but they can't get things done as fast as possible. That's a total “arrgghh”!
- I'd love to know what's happening on my website. This is normal. You'd love to know stats on your website, the current settings, or the number of subscribers the website has. What you must do? Call the website developer for updates and analytic reports of your website.
But you are bugged with this message: We will contact you as soon as we have the last report on the activity of your website. Wow. It's your website, you paid for its registration, and you spent hundreds of dollars for that. Yet, you can't get a report on its activity anytime you want. Facepalm!
- Over the past months, your website has been in great success in attracting organic traffic and visitors. Great news, indeed! But it takes minutes for the website to load – and it could drive visitors away.
When you checked out, there is not enough bandwidth and diskspace resources for the website. The hosting plan which is used by the website is not enough to accommodate large bandwidth required for heavy traffic. You'd really love to host your website on a new plan that can handle the demand at the moment, however, your web developer is adamant on doing your request.
Will you linger on the unsatisfactory hosting plan? Of course not, but you can't get details of website to change the nameservers. Dead-end, perhaps?
- One time when you visit your own website, your browser, which has virus alert guard, got stuck. Later you found that malware and virus are injected into the website's architecture by auto-bots. Malware and malicious code cause crash of the website, slow connections, and sometimes, broken website contents. You don't like that.
You tried contacting the person who is handling your website, but he or she can't be reached. You are in panic because you know malware can damage not just your website's architecture, but your business's reputation and credibility. But sorry, your developer is busy with other things and it will take few days before the problem will be resolved.
Can you see yourself in these headache-causing situations? Well, keep on reading to find out your circumstances with your current developer or web host resellers – and find out how to get out from these circumstances to regain control of your website.
Scenario 1
You ask a developer to build a website, either for personal or business needs. Of course, the developer does everything to avoid high cost. So the developer hosts the website on their own server. There is no need to spend for the hardware and software components of a server. By hosting the website on the developer's server, the cost of hosting is lower, but your website faces slow response when the developer's server is jammed.
How to Solve this Problem?
As the demand of the website grows, you need to keep the bandwidth and diskspace resources of the website in great shape. You can ask the website developer to transfer the website to a separate server.
How is it done? You point the domain to the server you will be using. Through the domain registrar (be sure you have access to it), transfer the DNS and servers of the website from the developer's server to a new and separate server. But you need to transfer the database and contents of the website or else you will start anew. Webhost management systems such as cPanel allows you to transfer files, including statistics, mySQL, and databases, to the new server. Otherwise, you need to ask the developer for the complete copy of all the website files.
Scenario 2
Like the first scenario, the website is hosted on the developer's server. You are contented with the performance and reliability of the server. The problem, however, is that you don't have access to the website server's account. You cannot easily install new programs and applications, add contents such as photos and videos, or edit PHP files. And sometimes, you are stuck with the “takes too long and costs too much problem” we have discussed above.
How to Solve this Problem?
Granted you are satisfied with the developer's server's performance and you don't want to transfer the website to another server, all you have to do is get necessary details and information on any server account of the website. Usernames and passwords will give you access to the server, to the webhost management systems, to the database, and to FTP accounts. FTP access provides you an opportunity to add or edit contents seamlessly. Should you wish to add WordPress, PrestaShop or any other website-building applications, FTP access can help you through it.
Scenario 3
This scenario tackles resellers. Resellers are third-parties that are bridging the webhost or server and the website. It can be that the reseller rents a dedicated server or a shared hosting plan from a hosting companies such as GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost, etc. Either of the two ways, bandwidth and diskspace can take a plunge down when traffic is increasingly great. Sometimes, you just need to get a separate dedicated server or your own premium shared hosting plan.
How to Solve the Problem?
You have two options to consider. First, you may go on using the reseller's server or hosting plan, but you have to get website's details and information such as account passwords. This way you have access to the management system of the website and you can add programs for content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal, or e-commerce solutions such as PrestaShop and Magento. Without direct access to the website's management systems, it is impossible to fast-forward the adding of contents into your website.
The second option requires you to register the website to a shared hosting plan or a dedicated hosting server. As I have discussed earlier, you need to point the domain to a new server or DNS. Before you can have your website working, however, you need to transfer the website files to the new server. Communication with the developer is necessary to get account details or the website files you need.
Scenario 4
Sigh! You have tried communicating with your website developer for the details of account access. But the developer refused to surrender these information to you. You are stuck with an not up-to-date website and legal battles.
How to Solve the Problem?
Well, we will not discuss how you can argue before the court on the legalities of the contract, but we will discuss the solution to the problem.
In this situation, you don't have any choice, but to give up the website. You can still use the website domain to rebuild the website from scratch. This time you can write the website program again for its second launch. Register to another host and point your domain to that server. By then, you have learned your lessons well. Do not give your full access to the web developer. You can give the developer his or her own FTP access which you can terminate easily when things are done or you are not contented with the person's performance.
Those who enter the internet race just recently, partial knowledge can be devastating. But you don't have to dwell on that. It is time to move on and get a rescue out of the clutches of bad web developers and unsatisfactory web hosts.
