Having a new website built or an old site redesigned is an exciting process. Fresh new designs, updated page layouts, perhaps some brand new site features to engage and excite your customers is a big task. The build is only part of the job, however. Your development team will need some info and/or access from you to make sure the launch process goes smoothly.
Things to collect
- Your domain name details
- Website hosting information
- Existing website admin access
- Where email is managed
- Third party services like newsletter lists, analytics and social networks
- Primary contact info for the person who initially set up and/or manages each of these accounts
- Login information for all related services
Have a website already?
If you already have a website, that means you already have a domain name and website host and are probably hosting email somewhere. Be sure to make sure you or someone at your company has login access to manage these services.
Your development team will most likely need access to your Domain Name Registrar (where you purchased the domain name) to make DNS changes. Common registrars include companies like GoDaddy, Network Solutions and many others. DNS is how your domain name points to your website host and email servers. If moving from one host to another, or to add security and speed features with CloudFlare, DNS changes will be required. Many registrars like GoDaddy have options to provide another user Delegate Access to your account, which is a great option preventing the need to share passwords or go through two-factor-authentication hurdles.
Super important – be sure you, or someone in your team has an admin login for all related web services.
Access to your current website’s hosting account may also be required to make backups, migrate old content and media assets and review the codebase for other content or code. This might include, but is not limited to Hosting Account Login and FTP (to access your site’s code and media). If you have a content management system like WordPress or Magento, having an admin user account can help with this too. If your development team has proper access, migrating content to a new site becomes a much simpler process. Limited or restricted access may result in a lot of copy & pasting work.
If you connect a signup form to a CRM like MailChimp, SalesForce or Constant Contact, access to these systems is handy too. Integrating a service like these requires the creation of API keys and options for fully testing the integration. If your development team isn’t able to confirm a signup by logging in and confirming the test makes it through, things may take more time and people to complete.
Starting fresh with a new website?
Great! This makes things a bit easier all around. All of the items above are still required, and if you’ve already purchased things like a Domain Name, your development team will need access. However, your team can help you set up web hosting and other services.
Unless you already have, hold on signing up for any of those third party tools. Your development team has experience using many of the popular CRMs out there and may have some recommendations on which is best for your specific situation.
Getting things together early helps keep launch smooth
We recommend getting the team involved, if you have one. It might take some time tracking down the person who manages your domain, or the primary contact hosting if the site’s been online for a while. However, now’s a great time to get everything in order and updated if needed.
Unsure about any of these details?
There are online tools that can help track down things like where your site is hosted, your website platform and which third party services it might use.
- who.is – Enter your domain name to see DNS related information. This might show where your site is hosted, which email service is used for your domain and in some cases the primary contact on the domain name account.
- hostingchecker.com – Since DNS can mask certain aspects of your website details for security reasons, this tool can help find where your site is hosted.
- builtwith.com – Find details about your website’s platform, plugins and third party services.
Montana Banana can provide tools to help collect all of this data from your team, complete with links to other resources that might help track things down.
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