Permitting Developer Access to Your Hosting Account

It is fairly common practice to hire a developer/designer to create a website which require access to your web hosting account.  Access for accounts can vary depending on how much you (as the owner of the account) are willing to permit.  If a developer requires database access, then they will need to have Control Panel access in order to create, configure, or edit the databases for the website. 

Sometimes, a developer or designer may need to migrate the website into Web Hosting Hub before they can begin.  Please reference this article for further information: How Do I Move My Website to Web Hosting Hub?

Determining the Correct Access for you Developer or Designer

When you establish a hosting account, you are given both access to the Account Management Panel (AMP) and the Cpanel.  The Account Management Panel allows you to keep your billing information separate from the access information that you must share with your developer.  Additionally, you can reset the password for Cpanel within AMP.  Do not share your AMP access with your developer.

Complete Access

This is important to note because if you wish to give complete access for the purpose of website development to your developer/designer, then it would simply be a matter of sharing the Cpanel User name and password.  This allows them full access to the website files for the website through the Cpanel or FTP.  Additionally, they will have access to the database utilities for purpose of database administration and modification.

Limited Access

If you wish to give limited access to your developer, then we recommend NOT giving them access to the Cpanel.  You can supply the temporary URL for FTP access so that they can manipulate the website files.  You can also create FTP accounts within your Cpanel and even set file limits. 

You can also allow your developer or designer to manipulate database files remotely (using a database client such as phpMyAdmin, or other 3rd party solutions), but you would need to setup Remote MySQL access. The main limitation for this type of access is that they would not be able to create databases. 

Removing Access to your Developer or Designer

If you have given your developer/designer access to your website through Cpanel, you can remove access at any point by doing the following

Removing Complete Access to Cpanel:

1. To remove COMPLETE ACCESS to account using the Cpanel, RESET THE CPANEL PASSWORD.
2. If you require complete removal of access to the account, you will need to determine your developer's IP address and ban it using the IP Deny Manager.
3. Make sure to check the email section just in case email accounts were created that need to be deleted.

Removing Partial Access via FTP and Remote MySQL

1. If you have created FTP accounts for your developer, either change the password or remove the accounts using the Cpanel FTP Account manager. 
2. Change the Cpanel password - the Cpanel password is also the master FTP password for the account.
3. If you have created Remote MySQL connections for your developer/designer to access databases remotely, then simply delete the connection you created in Remote MySQL in Cpanel.
4. Make sure to check the email section just in case email accounts were created that need to be deleted.
5. If your developer or designer has been given access information to your account or you have made the designer into a second point of contact in AMP, then remove their information.  You can also contact live technical support to make sure that all the information on the account takes this into account. When you are speaking with live support, you can also add a note to keep a developer/designer off of the account.