But I want to edit my website!

Your Website Developer Doesn’t Let You Edit Your Website?

“Well, who do they think they are? After all, it’s my site! Right? I want to edit my website!” You may have thought those words at one time or another. You may even have spoken them out loud to a friend. How did you get to this point? Why would your website developer not give you full access to your own website? Let’s start at the beginning and work our way through. Let’s get a better understanding of what’s going on here!

Finding A Website Developer

At some point, you will decide you need a website developer to create your site for you. After all, they know what they’re doing. They can do a better job, and they can get it done much more quickly. On top of that, you just don’t have the patience to go through a steep learning curve. You don’t want to acquire the skills necessary to pull it off on your own.

So you began by asking around or searching on Google for a local website developer. Or is it a designer? Then there’s also hosting, and of course, you need to find a domain name too! Wow, even when outsourcing, it can be a lot of work too! Who knew? However, as luck would have it, you finally find someone who can take care of all these items for you. Great!

Changing The Website Content

After a lot of back and forth with the website developer, your brand new website is finally ready to go live. It’s beautiful, has all the features you want, and it’s all been done for you. You didn’t involve yourself in all the technicality of putting the many pieces together. It doesn’t take too long though, and you think to yourself: I want to edit my website. Perhaps you need to modify some of the wording. Maybe you need to move a picture to a new spot on the page. You may want to add more pages with additional content. Either way, you contact your website developer to have the changes implemented for you.

This goes on for awhile until you decide to tell them “I want to edit my website”. You want to get access to the admin area and do the changes yourself. After all, won’t that save you time and money? Also, how hard can it really be? The site is already built and all you want to do is change a few things and add a page or two. This is where usually one of two things happen. The developer may tell you that they can’t give you access and that all changes have to go through them.
They may give you limited access, and you become upset that you don’t have access to the entire site.

I Want To Edit My Website! Can I Really Do So?

After having spent so much time and money on your own website, you feel that you should have access to all of it. So why do almost all website developers not do so? Believe it or not, there are many very good reasons. Let’s cover some of them here.

First off, so many websites are in fact quite complex and difficult to edit properly. This is regardless of what underlying software they use. Developers have training and years of experience. They are in tune with the quickly changing industry. They know what to do and how to do it. The same can’t be said of the general public. For example, when making even a simple website change, it can affect how the site is shown on various devices with different screen sizes. Your page edit might look fantastic on a big laptop screen, but it may all fall apart when shown on a tablet or phone.

As you’re poking around and trying to edit your website, you will end up having to call your website developer to help you out. In the end, they will spend a lot more time trying to teach you how to be a developer, than they would spend if they just did the changes themselves. If the developer doesn’t charge you for this time, they become upset and quickly lose patience with wanting to explain it all to you. If they do charge you for their time, you get upset, since now you’re paying a lot more!

Do I Know What To Look For?

Let’s face it, not everyone has an eye for graphic design and layout. In fact, most people don’t. Are you one of those people who want to use five different fonts, in seven different sizes, and nine different colors? Do you like to use animations? Are you making sure you’re not using images which have a copyright? Are your images the proper size and trimmed to display nicely? Oh, and while we’re at it … how’s your spelling and grammar?

As you can begin to imagine, it wouldn’t take much to take a professional website and reduce it to an amateurish nightmare very quickly! Eventually, there comes a point where the website developer no longer wants to be associated with the site, as it no longer reflects the pride they take in their craftsmanship. They end up removing their name from the footer and tell you that you’re on your own. You just lost your developer!

The internet also changes a lot in a very short period of time. The software constantly requires updating or even replacing. The way things were done just six months ago is not the way they’re done today! As all of these changes are taking place, it can be frustrating to work on your website when the user interface gets updated or even replaced. In fact, many modern websites require updates multiple times per week! Are you ready for that? Even though most people will say “I want to edit my website”, the reality is that very few have the experience to do so properly.

Your Developer Is Part Of Your Team!

Instead of trying to take over the management of your website, it’s much better to work on building a great relationship with your website developer. There may be ongoing monthly or annual costs, but it will be well worth it. Remember the saying: If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, just wait till you hire an amateur! In this case, the amateur would be yourself. The biggest favor you can do for yourself is to have an experienced website developer take care of your site on an ongoing basis. It will save you money, time, and a lot of frustration in the end.

So whether your developer doesn’t give you any access, or just limits your access to a few key components, they’re actually working in your own best interest! So instead of saying “I want to edit my website”, try saying “I want my website developer to edit my website”!

Solutions

Our parent company, Gecko Websites, provides fully managed website solutions, or just the pieces that you need if you want to do some of the work yourself. However, whether it makes more sense to have your website developer manage all of your website needs, or for you to have access to make those changes yourself, depends on the complexity of the website, and your capabilities and experience in website technologies. Usually, a conversation with a website development firm can help you realize what the best course of action would be. Contact us and let’s start that conversation!