What to do BEFORE Your Freelance Website Developer Disappears

I've been developing websites for 22 years now and loved every minute of it. One thing I've seen too frequently over the years is where someone hires a freelance developer and then at some point they disappear or tell you that they've got a new job and no longer will be able to work on the website for you, leaving you high and dry.

Just the day before yesterday I had a search engine optimization (SEO) client have that happen to him. He had told me a few months ago that he wanted to move everything related to his website over to Pixo, but we kept running into problems with that because the website developer wouldn't give us full access to the site and the databases for the website he sent to us where corrupted. That same client called in a panic a couple of days ago because the website was down and the website developer wasn't responding. There wasn't much we could do for him because we didn't have access to the server and the issues that were happening were all server side. We gave him some suggestions and then wished him luck.

Some advantages that Pixo has over freelance website developers is that we are an agency with a full team of developers, designers and online marketing specialists with years of experience. Often times a developer specializes in one or two skills, but with a team we cover the full spectrum of your website needs. Not only that, all of our team members have been together for a minimum of three years, so we are very efficient in what we do.

Another advantage is that Pixo has been developing world-class websites for our customers for over 17 years. We aren't here today and gone tomorrow. We'll be able to help you online marketing through every stage of growth.

What to do if you are currently working with a freelance for your website and online marketing:

• Make sure you have all the logins for your website. That would include: CMS, FTP, databases, hosting control panel
• Make sure you have the logins for your online marketing campaigns: Adwords, mailing lists, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Make sure that you have ownership of your domain name. You should be listed as the administrative contact on your domain and you should make sure you know where your domain name is registered and you have the logins for that account.
• Make sure you have a way you can contact your freelancer in case of emergencies. Everyone goes on vacation from time to time. Have a plan to make sure your freelancer can be contacted when the bad things happen.

A little diligence now will possibly save you some big headaches down the road. If you would like a full service agency that charges freelancer prices, please contact Pixo today.