Security measures for hosting your site

Hi,

I am planning to start a dating site and has a script on hand to be hosted by my chosen hosting company.
I will hired the service of website designing and programming to re-create the script the way i want it to be.

Then something hit me on the security of site. If i allow the website designer and programmer to enter my hosting server, they will need my login userid and password. Can they be trusted? I know i can change the password but i still do not feel safe about it.

This is actually my very first attempt to start a site like this and i wonder anyone who has such experience to share with me how i can go about it without compromising the security of my site and server.

I thought of buying a cheap basic share hosting package for the purpose of designing and programming the site by my hired web designer and programmer. After it is done, i will transfer it the main server.

What do you guys think?

 

Why do you need to provide a server for them at all? Have them design / program what you need, deliver it, then you upload. If it's an extensive job, of course, having a joint server to work on might be beneficial, but that's whay we have things like Github.

 

Joint server? how does it work?

Yes, they can do the design and structure for me in the beginning and i will upload it to my server. What if there is anything wrong with the script later on? I need them to come in to check it out and i will have to give them my login and PW to enter my server to check it out. That seems to be a bad idea.

 

As long as your designer / programmer have access to the exact same environment as your server, there should be no reason for them to actually log in - they should be able to reproduce the issue on their own development server. As for "joint server" I just meant a server (secondary / for development) they could work on together. But again,

 

Use separate servers for development & production. That's the best you can do. However, for peace of mind, you may hire "trusable" devs with good customer reviews and sign NDAs with them.

 

Thanks.. I did check out Github.. A nice concept.. What do you think of Github? In my humble opinion, I think it is just a place for the improvement of the script you are working on. In what situation do you think Github is useful?

 

Thanks..noted..what do you think of Github..is that necessary?

 

GitHub is a version control system - it helps when more than one person is working on the same project, since it gives the ability to update and sync the codebase from individual coders in different locations. You can read up a bit here: http://www.howtogeek.com/180167/htg-explains-what-is-github-and-what-do-geeks-use-it-for/

 

Sorry, i forgot to ask this.
By getting a secondary server, do you mean the designer/programmer has his own server to do their work or do you mean i need to rent another server space for them to do the work?

 

Normally, any developer have their own development server. You could of course create a separate server instance, but that seems like a bit overkill. If you have a decent host, you could also ask them to set up secondary accounts, with limited access privileges.

 

I see.. Thanks.. I will get that done..

 

Hey, don't compromise with share hosting package for the purpose of designing and programming the site. You can also use separate servers for development and production. Usually, web designer and programmer have their own development server.

 

just hire some freelancer from job sites like odesk and elance. these freelancers don't want bad feedbacks so sure they cant afford to make mistakes.