This is a boring post.
But boring is better than a nightmare. And ensuring that your organization has access to these 6 key accounts will prevent you from a nightmare scenario for your business or nonprofit.
What kind of nightmare? One in which a disgruntled former intern is the sole administrator on your nonprofit’s Facebook page and decides to launch a little campaign of his own. Or one in which you spend a bunch of money on a new website and just before launch realize that your former web developer owns your domain and isn’t happy that you didn’t rehire him. Or the more common scenario, you realize at a critical moment that a former staff member was the only one with the login to your website and she’s unreachable.
Make sure you have complete access to these accounts:
Website Hosting Server
The hosting account where the website files are served (e.g. GoDaddy, Siteground, Bluehost, etc.). If your site ever goes down, this is usually where you need to go for support. Make sure this is always set up to auto-renew and that account notifications go to a current email address. It’s not a bad idea to set a calendar reminder for this and your domain registration around the annual due dates to confirm it’s in good standing.
Domain Registration
The account where your website domain (example.org) is owned. This may be under the same account as your hosting or it might be separate. Make sure this is set to auto-renew as well. You don’t have to do much with this on an ongoing basis, but if you lose access or it expires, you also lose your website URL and all your email addresses. This should not be owned by your developer. If your relationship sours with them or they disappear, you’d be screwed.
Current Website Backend
You need to be able to log into your website’s backend CMS so you can update the website content. You should have full administrative privileges so you can add/remove other users (WordPress, Drupal, etc.) and access all parts of the site.
Google Analytics
Make sure you have full access to your Google Analytics account to add/remove users as needed. If you ever lose access you can start a new account from scratch, but you won’t have any past data on web traffic.
Google Business Listing
People who search for you on Google or Google Maps will see your business listing before your website. This is a great place to make a solid first impression and share important information with your audience. You’ll also get notifications when people leave reviews, which is very important. If you haven’t yet claimed your business on Google My Business, do it now.
Social Media
Make sure you have access to all social media accounts. Make sure they are attached to an organization email (not your former intern’s Gmail…) so you have permanent control of these accounts.
And if I don’t…?
If you don’t have access to all of these, don’t panic, just try to get in contact with the people that do. Whatever you do, just don’t wait until there’s a crisis before you start tracking these down. Do it today and sleep good tonight 😉
Pro tip: Once you have these accounts, consider saving them with LastPass. This will keep them all securely in a browser extension so employees can access the accounts without having to actually see the passwords.
