Good day Everybody,
I’m interested to know what you might have done to guarantee the continuance of websites if you’re not available.
I’ve recently returned to the game and I’d like to offer my services more widely, but I’m not young, and none of us live forever— sooner or later somebody else will need to either rejig the sites I maintain or my clients will need to start from scratch. I’d like to save them that dilemma.
In other words, what provisions are in place, should clients call, and nobody answers the phone?
Needless to say, I have provided my existing clients with the passwords, and publishing details, which should make it (comparatively) easy for somebody else to take my sites over but I wonder whether there’s more I can do. I am a sole trader.
Thanks in anticipation,
GeoffPh.
My only thought is: have you given clients your project file and any master image files that you created for them.
Thanks for the response, Bill. I thought that this topic would have attracted a flurry of replies, but it seems not.
Your suggestion to lodge files with the client is a good one. I haven’t done that, but they use Dropbox so I suppose if I were to access that and drop everything in there . . . along with a sort of ‘User Manual’ to help another clean up my mess.
I wondered whether there might have been a common or standard process of which I was unaware.
G.
Hi @geoffph
your question honors you. I am not a developer, just a die-hard amateur. Giving a copy of your projects to your clients can be a good thing in the short term. Let me explain: I am building three personal projects that should have an estimated lifespan of about ten years (these are retirement projects…). My concern at the moment is to find the design and management software that is certain to still be there in 10 years. Well I must say that I am forced to multiply plan Bs because in the No code zone AI changes the situation so quickly that it makes any project only “short term.” No one today can guarantee what will still be there in 5 years. It is a real concern.
To come back to your question, I think that you have already done the essential for your clients by giving them access to the management of their sites and a backup of their datas. Again, this is an extremely respectful approach on your part. 
That is a good thought about giving them the files. It came up in a conversation with a client I had recently. At first I wasn’t sure how it would work because they would have to know quite a bit of the ins and outs of the tool to work with with it but I suppose if you are really unavailable then someone else will have to learn the files and they may just prefer to work with once you set it up anyways.
To add to my original post:
How might I advise my client/s to best find another web builder? They, the client/s, are novices, and I’m wondering whether there’s somewhere that they can advertise for another (Rapidweaver?) web builder.
I thought this topic would have attracted a raft of interest… but it seems not. Perhaps many readers are younger than me, and have a sense of invincibility.