“I just want to change my opening hours and I have to email the web guy and wait three days.” That, or being charged fifty euro for a two-minute edit, is one of the most common frustrations I hear from Irish business owners.
Most of the time the fix is not technical. It is knowing what your site is built on, how to get into it, and which changes are safe to make yourself. This guide covers all three, whoever built your site and whether or not you can currently get into it.
How do you find out what your site is built on?
You cannot edit it until you know what it is. There is a quick way to check that needs no technical knowledge.
Open your website, right-click anywhere on the page, and choose View Page Source. You will get a wall of code. Press Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac, and search it for each of these in turn:
wp-contentmeans WordPresswix.comorwixstaticmeans Wixsquarespacemeans Squarespacecdn.shopifymeans Shopifywebflowmeans Webflow
If none of them appear, the site is most likely custom-built, and whoever built it is the fastest route to an answer.
The other reliable trail is money. Someone is paying to keep the site online, so a hosting or platform charge on a bank statement will name the company involved, and a domain renewal notice will name your registrar.
How do you get into your own website?
Each platform has its own front door, and they are predictable:
- WordPress:
yoursite.ie/wp-admin - Shopify:
yoursite.ie/admin - Wix, Squarespace, Webflow: you log in on their website, not yours
- A custom site: whatever address the developer set up, often something like
yoursite.ie/admin
If you have no login, use the password reset on that page first. It sends a link to whichever email address the account was created with, which is the part that catches people out: it is often an old agency, a former employee, or a personal address nobody uses any more.
Step three: if the account is not yours
This is the situation behind a surprising number of the searches that land on this page, and it needs saying plainly. If a previous developer or agency holds the login, you cannot edit the site and you should not attempt to get in around them.
What you can do is establish control:
- Look up who the domain is registered with. The domain is the single most important asset, because with it you can rebuild elsewhere and point it at a new site. Without it you are starting from nothing.
- Find the recurring payment. Whoever receives it can reach the account.
- Ask in writing for transfer of the domain, the hosting, and the site files. Keep it civil and specific. Most handovers are simply administrative once someone actually asks.
- If they refuse, focus everything on the domain. A site can be rebuilt. A domain with years of history and links pointing at it cannot.
What is safe to change, and what is not
Once you are in, the distinction that matters is content versus structure.
Safe to change yourself, any time:
- Prices, when they change
- Opening hours, including bank holidays
- Photos, as long as you resize them first
- News, offers, or a notice
- Wording anywhere on a page
- Adding a new page
Leave alone, or ask first:
- Page addresses. Renaming a page breaks the address Google and every other site has on file, and unless it redirects, that page’s history is gone.
- Deleting pages, for the same reason.
- The navigation structure.
- Plugins, apps, and anything in a settings or SEO panel you do not recognise.
The pattern is that content changes are reversible and structural ones often are not. The damage from a structural change also tends to be invisible for weeks, which is what makes it worth being careful about.
The photo trap
The single most common way a business owner slows their own website down is uploading photos straight from a phone. A modern phone photo can be four or five megabytes, and a page with six of them on it becomes painfully slow on mobile data.
Resize before uploading. Somewhere around 1,600 pixels on the long edge is plenty for a full-width image, and far less for a thumbnail. Some platforms do this for you and some very much do not, so it is worth checking yours once rather than assuming.
When the answer is that you cannot edit it
Sometimes the honest answer is that the site was built so that you cannot, and no amount of poking will change that. Hand-coded pages with no editing layer, or a platform admin so awkward you are afraid to touch anything, both leave you dependent on someone else for the simplest updates.
That is not a technical necessity. It is a decision somebody made at build time, and often one that suited them more than it suited you.
What “you can edit it yourself” should actually look like
The editing side of a site should be built around the business, not around the software. A Galway restaurant needs simple controls for its menu and daily specials. A Cork tradesperson needs an easy way to add recent jobs and photos. A Kilkenny shop needs product and opening-hours editing and very little else.
The aim is not a sprawling content system with a thousand options nobody will ever open. It is the handful of controls you will actually touch, laid out plainly, with the structure, speed and search foundations kept properly built underneath so that changing the words never puts any of that at risk.
Getting started
If you are locked out of your own site, or stuck with one you cannot touch, get in touch and I will give you a straight read on your options, including when the answer is that you can sort it yourself.
If you are planning a new site and never want to be in that position, this is how I build a website you can update yourself: a custom site you own outright, with no platform rent for the privilege of keeping it online. It sits inside my wider approach to custom websites and tools, which is to build the complicated part once and keep the part you use simple.
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