How to securely give your developer access to your WordPress website

Your developer needs access to your WordPress website. But you feel a little uncomfortable handing over your personal user information. Perhaps your WordPress account shares login info with other secure accounts and despite your trust to hire them, you don’t really want to share those details with your developer.

(Tip: if you are ready to make the jump to a more secure password setup but don’t want to go through the hassle of needing to remember multiple passwords, it’s time to make the jump to a password manager. I personally use LastPass and I love it. It’s free!)

Here are two ways to share WordPress access with your developer.

the quicker but less secure way

It’s possible to just share your account information with your developer directly via email or some other messenger, the idea being that you would change your password once development is done.

But as I mentioned earlier, this isn’t super secure. Even if you trust your developer with your life, email security is weak and inboxes are easily hacked. If you must share passwords via email, use something like OneTimeSecret to make the process a bit more secure.

If you are determined to go this route, make sure your username and password are unique to WordPress and you aren’t using them anywhere else!

the better way (and what I recommend)

The industry standard way to share WordPress access with your developer is to create a new user using your developer’s information. 

This is secure because WordPress will email them their login information and then require them to follow a link to change their password. No passwords stay in any unsecured email inboxes. This is the method I recommend to all of my clients.

You might be thinking, “But this sounds complicated. I don’t know how to create a new user.”

Just keep reading and I’ll show you exactly how to create a new user account for your developer, step-by-step. 

How to set up a new user for your developer

WordPress lets you create an unlimited number of user accounts. You can actually use this method to create users for as many people as you need – virtual assistants, developers, designers, etc.

Here’s how to set up an account to safely give access to your WordPress site:

First step. Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Users >> Add New. The page you’ll land on will look like this:

Next step. Enter the following information for your developer (if you’re one of my clients, you can just enter it as I typed here).

• Username (required) — Pick a recognizable username for your developer. This can’t be changed. First and last name without a space is always a safe choice
• Email (required) — Self-explanatory. Type your developer’s email address.
• First Name (optional) — Type your developer’s first name.
• Last Name (optional) — Type your developer’s last name.
• Website (optional) — Type your developer’s website.
• Password (required) — Click Show Password to create a new one for your developer. You can replace this with one you choose, if you like, but I recommend you keep the generated one. It’s very secure.
• Send User Notification — Make sure you check this box to send your developer an email with their new login info.
• Role — Pick a role for your developer using the drop down. Be sure to select Administrator. This will give them full access to your website so they can make whatever changes you hired them to make.

Then just click Add New User. Your developer will be notified via an email with their new login information and will be able to update their password.

Congratulations! You’ve just securely shared website access with your WordPress developer.

what to do once your developer is done

If you have an ongoing relationship with your developer, you can leave this user open for them. If not, once they’re done you may choose to delete their WordPress account.

You can do that like this:

Navigate to Users >> All Users on your WordPress dashboard. This page will list all of the users that currently have access to your WordPress website

Hover over the user you want to delete and hit Delete. If you don’t see a delete option, it’s because you’re currently logged into that user. Log into a different user account first, then the delete option will appear.

After you hit delete, you will likely get a confirmation message that looks like this. It’s just asking you to reassign the posts or pages that this particular user created.

You probably don’t want to delete them, so go ahead and reattribute them to a new user by selecting attribute all content to and picking a new user. Then hit Confirm Deletion.

take the next steps

That’s it! Now you know how to safely share access with your WordPress developer.

This is how I prefer to work with my clients – safely, securely, allowing them maximum control by having my own user, separate from their account.

If you’re not already a client of mine, you should be aware that I’m offering a few complimentary consult calls each week where I provide an evaluation of your current online strategy and offer some tips for improvement.

If that’s something you’re interested in, you can find out more here.

Thanks for reading,

Jennie

P.S. Hope this was helpful! You can share website access with your WordPress developer by creating a new user on your dashboard, being sure to give them admin access.

Then, you can delete their user account when you’ve signed off on all their work.