Safe Web design

Well if you can’t trust your developer, then you (or they) are doing it wrong!

You should hire and use professionals – people you can trust to do a good job, communicate well, and act professionally.

But if you’re still worried, you could give them a copy of your site with a copy of the database and have them develop against that. Then once they’re done you can carefully merge their developments back into your existing site.

I wouldn’t do it that way. If you’re really concerned, take backups of the database at intervals that yo uthink are relevant and save them on your own PC (or somewhere else that you have access to and the devleoper doesn’t). The same can, and should, be done with the websites files.

At the end of it all if you really want to lock the devleoepr out, then you can remove their admin account from WordPress, then change the FTP/control panel/etc passwords. That’s going to be enough to stop them from gaining access normally.

Then again, if you really want them to have no access, you can get them to set up the theme, and email that to you and you can install the theme and populate and set up the site. That way they won’t have any access at all to it.

If you are really that worried you might want to check that the developer hasn’t built in any back doors to the site. It’s an extremely remote possibility, and would only b edone by the most un-ethical of developers, but it all depends on just how paranoid you feel at the time.

In reality though, you shouldn’t have to do that. There’s not many developers out there that will do anything bad at all. It only just some of the worse stories that you hear sometimes. If you’re really going to be that worried about your devleoper, spend the extra money and hire osmeone that doesn’t make you nervous. It will be well worth it in te long run!

You need to re-read what I wrote above. I gave you several solutions to what you can do. If you can’t follow that, then you most likely don’t have the experience to be able ot do this in the first place, so you’d need to find someone else to do it for you – which would completely negate the idea of doing it in the first place.

I’ve already told you… Change all ofthe sites passwords, and delete any accounts givne to the developer. That way they can’t have any acces.s How that’s done is up to you to figure out as we don’t have access to your web erver.

Try contacting them http://www.indiegogo.com/contact/questions

You’ll have to start looking here:

http://wordpress.org/themes/

And add plugins for additional functionality.

Sounds like Health-Pond has some serious trust issues… why not use a legal contract like any real company to company business is done? At least then you’ll have legal backups if you think your developer is going to cause you issues… take ’em to court if needed.

In my 12 years of web development I’ve never heard of a developer being that malicious. The most I’ve seen is a take down of a site before it’s been pushed live due to the developer company not being paid! If they do their job, and you pay them according to your agreement, most developers won’t have an issue. If you are that paranoid, use legal documents and hired well trusted developers.