It’s a scenario that plays out every day: a small business decides to make changes to their web site, but when they try to contact their web designer, he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. There is no response to telephone calls or emails, there is no word of him in local business circles, and his own business web site – if he ever had one – is gone as well. The business does not know how to access their own web site, they do not know how to update it, and for that matter, they do not know if they have any rights to it. Some might say this is the price you pay for allowing an amateur to run your web site, but for business owners in dark economic times, it is no laughing matter. Even well-established and highly professional web design firms are not immune to sudden turns of fortune. Banks can foreclose, offices can flood, and web developers can get hit by the proverbial bus.

So what can small business owners do to safeguard their web sites against a worst-case scenario where either the designer or the web firm itself has gone out of business? Whatever your business’s size, sector, or web presence, you should maintain a web site information inventory which contains the most critical information about your web site. This inventory should include login addresses, usernames, passwords, email accounts, expiration dates, domain registry information, e-commerce access, and any information particular to your web site. In the event of a break in service with your current web designer, the inventory will give you the information you need to recover your web presence or transfer it to to a new designer.

We have put together a spreadsheet template for you to use to assemble your company’s web site information. Simply download the file in your preferred format and save locally.

• Web Site Information Inventory in .ods (Open Office Calc) format
• Web Site Information Inventory in .xls (Microsoft Excel) format
• Web Site Information Inventory in .pdf format, for printing only (cannot be edited on screen)

Much of the information the inventory aims to collect is quite technical. You may wish to engage with a professional web designer to help you gather this information.

If this template has been helpful to you, please let us know.