Keep control of your website after handover.

Your site often depends on several services: domain, hosting, email and additional tools. Keep a list of providers, account owners, authorised people and renewal dates. Do not include passwords in that list; keep them in an appropriate password manager.

A provider’s access should match the work needed. Ask how to remove it at the end of an assignment and recover the account if someone leaves your organisation. These questions are easier to resolve before an emergency.

Changing hours or a price is a content update. Fixing an incompatibility or applying a technical update maintains operation. Adding a language, payment feature or member area changes the scope. Knowing which category a request belongs to avoids confusing maintenance with development.

Agree a channel for reporting incidents and a person who approves changes. For an issue, send the page address, steps taken and a screenshot without sensitive data. Explain the business impact: a typo and an unusable form do not have the same priority.

Ask what backups cover: files, database, media or configuration. Clarify frequency, retention and the possibility of testing restoration. A copy stored in the same place as the site does not cover every failure scenario.

When changing provider, prepare exportable files and data, licences to retain and features to reconnect. Some platforms impose their own transfer limits. Recording them at handover helps you understand the work needed when you decide later.