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Hey guys,
Hired a developer to make a WordPress ECommerce website for me, in the beginning he delivered the website to me with credentials, which were ‘limited’ to only changing the product names, add posts and do a little bit with the front page sliders and all, he made a custom theme for our store and was afraid if we “stole it or sold it to someone else for cheap”
So did not give me access to the hosting account, nor did he give me credentials to add plugins or make administrative changes/upload new files on my own website…
All I have is these limited user credentials through which I can get into the website, now that it’s been a long time and I no longer intend to work with this greedy developer, how can I make a backup of the database and the entire website including the theme to upload this to a new hosting account managed by me?
Any ideas on how to do so, I own this thing, I paid for it, not 30-40 but freakin 1000 Dollars, and he charged this amount from each of the 10 of us franchise store owners to make exactly the same website…
Learned from the hard mistake, paid overpriced greedy developer, now please advise how can I get into my own website, thank you!
>Folks, you get.. what.. you.. pay for!!
Seriously this. $1000 for a single e-commerce site is peanuts. Our ecomm site start at $8000 for something simple. We typically run $15-20,000 for a single site.
That said, you are screwed. Unless you have a contract that says the sites belong to you, and the dev lives somewhere that you can take legal action against him, the sites are not yours. They are his and you have no legal means by which to acquire them.
Unless you have access to the database or cPanel you’re not getting in.
Hacking the sites would be illegal, i would not recommend that.
The best you can hope for is that he honors the original agreement and turns the sites over to you.
What does the contract say?
Kinda seems like he’s holding your website hostage. If you have a a contract that says you can move the site and he won’t let you then you should contact a lawyer
Yeah that’s the stain on our little industry here… I wish so much everyone understood the stipulation of what it means to not have access to your host.
I don’t have any advice other than being at the mercy of this designer.
Might be worth using the who is lookup information or reaching out to his contacts
Lol, that is not overpriced for an ecommerce site.
First of all – 1000 dollars is probably not overpriced or a greedy developer. I usually charge several times that, simply because that is how much work it is.
However – you should of course get full admin access to your website. As long as it was not specified in the initial contract or other written agreement that you would NOT get such access, you should be able to take him to small claims court or similar if he does not give it to you. Regarding his worries – just write a contract where it says that the website can not be resold as a template, and that it may only be sold together with the business (ie: if you sell the business, the website will follow as part of the sale)
Where are you and the developer based? I deal with this all the time, clients come with crazy horror stories like this. Pm me I’ll help you get this site in your control for free.
Have you tried contacting the developer and asking how much it would cost to release/migrate the site(s) to your own hosting account?
An ecommerce site for $1000 where I’m assuming you haven’t paid for hosting is pretty cheap, depending on how many products of course.
People, anyone getting involved to help you should be *VERY* careful here as this is not a grey area legally, it is very black and white and if you do something to exfiltrate this data you are breaking the law.
Is it worth having a criminal record over?
The developer owns a VPS in which he rents a site to the OP, the fact that this topic is “how can I hack my site” is already saying it’s going to need something illegal to get his data.
First of all you have no clue if the OP is being honest, he might be a competitor of this website who somehow harvested credentials for all we know.
This is for the OP, a lawyer and the developer to deal with, anyone else getting involved is putting themselves at risk for legal action, so think very carefully about helping this situation.
I am not trying to be a dick, I work in cybersecurity and I see all manner of scams and people trying to help someone else out by inadvertently breaking the law.
Don’t hack the website.
If it’s yours, it’s yours. Use legal means to get your data. By your data I mean the code you paid to be written.
If it’s some weird licensing style agreement and it’s not yours. Then it’s not yours. It’s licensed for use and not yours to take.
No need to hack anything. Hacking is bad mmmmay!
I agree that you should contact a lawyer given the info you shared.
Lol. “I paid for the thing, a 1000 dollars!!”. Folks, you get.. what.. you.. pay for!!
Contact your Hosting provider where the current website is hosted. Current Hosting did you Purchased or he?
Can you install plugins?
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