You are just starting your site, it’s not working out the way you want it to, you are panicking or calling for help on forums or facebook and your knight in shining armor rides in and offers to fix it for you.  All you need to do is give them your Admin access and password and the problem will be fixed.

How many of you have done this?  I bet quite a few, and I know I have several times.

Am I about to tell you don’t do it, you can’t trust anyone and advise you to run screaming from that person?  Actually, I’m not.  

I will throw in a disclaimer though.  Giving someone administration access to your site gives them FULL ACCESS TO YOUR SITE.  If you don’t know them very well or you aren’t sure about it, then listen to yourself and don’t give them access to your site.  I think I said enough about access to your site for you to realise it’s pretty important. 

There is always going to be a time when ‘someone’ needs the access.  I’ve had to do it on many occasions when a problem needs to be fixed.  I’ve given access to support people, to Virtual Assistants, friends or colleagues.  

What I don’t give is my OWN Admin Access.

I make a new user.  I create a user called something different to my admin access.  You could use Help Person / Support Person or something similar that you can give out as you need to.  I create a new email address based on what I call the new user so the email might be supportperson@mysitename.com and email the password to that address. I always use email forwarders for these types of emails.

When you need to give someone admin access, there is no worry about having to remember to change your password afterwards.  Now after the help has been given, you can simply delete the user, drop the access rights down to subscriber or just change the password.  The ownership stays in your hands and you don’t have to remember a new password for your own access.

Also if you have some of the security plugins like Wordfence on your site, then if someone logs onto that user you will be notified when they do and you will know who you have given access to.

This suggestion is only if you need to give someone temporary access to your site and they won’t be using it after they have done what is needed.

If it’s an editor or someone who always needs access to your site, you create them as their own user.  

I’m sure there are lots of other ideas some of you may have.  Let me know and I’ll amend the post if you have any other suggestions.

Tania Shipman