Help please regarding my website.

Hello! I'm looking for some advice please. I've never had a website before, and someone recommended to me is creating mine. It's taken a long time (I hired him in January!) to get it done and he doesn't listen to what I want. But never mind, I've paid him half and half when it's complete so no point in complaining. However, I wouldn't want to use him again in the future if I'd like something altered. He is very difficult to get ahold of. So when he finally finished my website, is there anything I need to know if I'd like to hire someone else to do alterations please?

Does he need to give me passwords, or who he is using for the webspace etc.

I'd really appreciate some advice, thank you so much.

Best wishes xx

If you're not happy, dump him. I would in a heartbeat. Get someone else.

As for your question a lot of designers/agencies do maintenance stuff and it's not too expensive. But it's cheaper to do it yourself. If you want things updating etc it'll be fairly cheap but changing design elements will be more expensive.

Pete.

Did he get the host for you as well?

If so, make sure you have ALL the information from them: username, password, who it is, etc... anything you can get.

As for the website, did he provide a mock-up in PSD? A photoshop mock-up? If so ... make sure you get that too. If you need to make changes later and don't want to hire him, you'll need that stuff.

You should get all the codes as well.

You need to find out who he is hosting the site though. If he says he is hosting the site himself...request it to be moved ASAP. In that case get a host like godaddy.com.

In order to be able to alter the design or your website...you have to have FTP access. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and this is how you upload and download the updated or changed version to your website.

You will also need access to all edit files...that way who ever you hire can edit the website with no problem. Also it would be a good idea to find out how the site has been built, wither it is a flash website, or an XHTML/CSS website. There are many types of websites; so just ask what technologies he is using to build the website with. This way you know what type of developer you need to hire, or what programming language you need to learn to edit the site yourself.

Let us know if you have any more questions!!

Totally agree!

Also find out where he registered the domain name and get the username and password for that site/account as well!

Dump him!!