I was wondering, when hiring a coder, whats the best thing to do when giving them access to files? An ftp or through the cpanel? And How can I limit it so they can't just delete or copy the files? Because I'd want to make sure a person wouldn't just walk away with the files.. And the other question is, how can I protect my images online from being copied? Thanks!
You don't want to give them access to cpanel if you don't trust them. You can create an ftp user for only certain directories, but they won't have access to phpmyadmin if they need to access a database. They will be able to copy any files you give them access to. You can delete the ftp user after they are finished.
What I used to do is just use a differant domain for them to work on and gave them acceess to cPanel that way. I also only hired locally, not some random guy over the internet. The domain was only used for people who were designing something for me.