Version: 2008
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Best Practices: Choosing a Web site host
Best Practices
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Choosing a Web site host
Best practice #3: Figure out who is in control
The people who have access to your site have the potential to cause harm to it and your business, either accidentally or on purpose. So it is critical that you set up access rights to your site; this will allow authorized and trusted users to make changes but will keep the site safe from hackers and accidental damage.

Most hosts give you the ability to assign rights to both users and groups. Groups set permission levels for the users that are in them. For example, you might have one group that can publish files only via FTP and another group that has access to server configurations. Within each group, you place users who are able to act on only certain parts of the site. Generally, you should have at least one person in the business who has enough knowledge and control over everything on the site to fix any mishaps.

Small businesses often outsource certain functions for specific needs. This is an acceptable practice, but make sure you have a record of who has access to your site and what their capabilities are. For example, your designer doesn't need to have permission to edit CGI scripts that can affect the way users navigate your site.

The best practice for controlling changes to your live site is to have multiple Web environments: development, staging, and production. Your development site can be a sort of "sandbox" where programmers and designers work out changes to your site. The staging area is where you do the final testing before making your changes live. Finally, the production site is what your customers see. Most Web development products support this three-tier architecture.

Three-stage publishing 
SitePurposeAccess
DevelopmentProgram, design, and test Web site changesSite developers and designers
StagingA mirror of the live site where changes are tested with the rest of the siteDevelopers, in-house testers
ProductionWhat the whole world seesYour customers and the public
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