The Website Files You Should Never Lose

If you had to hire a new web designer tomorrow, could you give them your logo, brand colors, photos, website content, and login information?

The website files and assets you should never lose include your original editable logo files, high-resolution photos, brand colors and fonts, website copy, testimonials, domain and hosting access, and a current website backup. These are business assets, and you should keep your own copies instead of relying on your web designer to store them indefinitely.

After building websites for businesses for more than a decade, I’ve found that it’s actually pretty rare for a new client to arrive with every piece of their website neatly organized and ready to go. Files are scattered between computers. Someone else created the logo years ago. The headshot is buried in an email. Nobody remembers the exact brand color. And sometimes the person who originally built the website is no longer around.

The good news is that you don’t need a perfectly organized folder containing every website file you’ve ever used. But there are some business assets you really should have.

1. Your Original, Editable Logo Files

This is probably the asset I see missing most often.

A client sends me their logo, but it’s a tiny JPG or PNG they pulled from their existing website. It might look fine at that size, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good-quality logo file.

Ideally, you should have both high-resolution versions of your logo and the original editable or source files.

Depending on how your logo was created, those might include:

• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Encapsulated PostScript (.EPS)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• High-resolution PNG files, including transparent-background versions
• High-resolution JPG files

You don’t necessarily need to know how to open or edit all of these files yourself. You just need to have them.

Your website isn’t the only place you’ll use your logo. You may eventually need it for signs, printed materials, apparel, advertising, social graphics, vehicle graphics, or a completely different website layout.

Different applications also need different versions and dimensions. A horizontal logo that works beautifully in one website header might not work in another. You may need a square version for social media or a simplified icon for your website favicon.

If all you have is a tiny image copied from your current website, your next designer has far fewer options.

 

2. Your Brand Colors and Fonts

Your brand isn’t just your logo.

Keep a record of the exact colors and fonts used for your business.

For colors, you should at least know the HEX codes used online. For example, Marketing Clarity’s primary teal is #00AEA8. That means I don’t have to eyeball a screenshot and try to recreate the color every time I need it.

The same goes for fonts. Write down the names of your heading font, body font, and any other brand fonts you regularly use.

This information can be incredibly simple. You don’t necessarily need a professionally designed 40-page brand standards document.

A one-page document that says, “These are our logos, these are our colors, and these are our fonts” is infinitely better than having nothing.

3. Your Original Photos

Keep the original, highest-quality versions of the photos that matter to your business.

That includes things like:

• Your professional headshot
• Team photos
• Photos of your office or location
• Project or portfolio photos
• Product photos
• Before-and-after photos
• Event photos
• Other professional brand photography

Don’t assume you’ll always be able to download these from your website later.

Images displayed on a website are often resized, compressed, cropped, or otherwise optimized for the web. The copy you download from an existing page may not be the same quality as the original photograph.

I regularly need client photos when building a website, and many clients don’t have all of them anymore. When you pay for professional photography, make sure the final images are stored somewhere you control.

4. Your Website Copy

Save a copy of the important written content from your website.

I’m not saying your old website copy is sacred and should never change. In fact, when I’m rebuilding a website, I frequently rewrite existing content to improve the SEO, messaging, organization, and conversions.

But the old content is still useful.

It tells us what services you’ve described, what information you’ve historically given customers, how you’ve explained your process, and what details we shouldn’t accidentally lose during a rebuild.

This becomes especially important when you’re moving from one website platform to another.

I recently worked with a company that wanted to migrate its website to a different platform. Since I typically rebuild sites from scratch in WordPress rather than simply copying the old website, I didn’t necessarily need the old website itself.

But I did need the pieces.

The existing content and images gave us a starting point. From there, I could rebuild the site and improve the copy rather than trying to recreate the business’s entire history from memory.

If you’re considering a rebuild yourself, I explain more about what goes into the process in How Long Does a Website Redesign Take?

5. Your Testimonials

Please don’t let years of great customer feedback disappear with an old website.

Keep copies of testimonials you’ve collected, especially testimonials that customers have sent directly to you.

If you have reviews on third-party platforms, you may be able to find those again. But if someone sent you a fantastic testimonial in an email five years ago and that email disappears, that testimonial may be gone too.

Testimonials are useful far beyond a single testimonials page. I use them throughout websites to support service pages, demonstrate results, and give potential customers evidence that a business actually delivers what it promises.

Keep them somewhere outside your website.

6. Your Domain and Hosting Information

This one isn’t technically a “file,” but it belongs on this list because losing access can cause much bigger problems than losing an image.

You should know:

• Where your domain is registered
• Who controls the domain account
• Where your website is hosted
• How to access the hosting account
• How to access your WordPress website
• Which email address is attached to these accounts

Your web designer can help manage these things, but your business should ultimately have access to them.

This is especially important if you ever need to change providers or your relationship with a web professional ends unexpectedly.

I’ve written an entire article about what happens if your web designer disappears because I’ve seen how difficult this situation can become when a business owner doesn’t control the accounts connected to their own website.

 

7. A Current Backup of Your Website

If you have a WordPress website, there should be a backup system in place.

How often you need backups depends on how frequently your website changes. A busy ecommerce site needs a very different backup schedule than a five-page informational site that gets updated twice a year.

Some managed WordPress hosting platforms automatically create backups. If yours doesn’t, you’ll need another backup solution.

I don’t routinely hand my clients backup files to download and store themselves because the hosting environments I work with generally have backup systems in place. But that doesn’t mean you should simply assume your website is being backed up.

Know the answer to these questions:

Is my website being backed up? How often? Where are those backups stored? And how would the site be restored if something went wrong?

If nobody can answer those questions, that’s something to fix.

8. Your Important Business Links and Profiles

Finally, keep a simple record of the external accounts and profiles connected to your online presence.

That might include your:

• Facebook page
• Instagram account
• LinkedIn profile
• YouTube channel
• Google Business Profile
• Scheduling system
• Email marketing platform
• Other important business profiles

Again, this doesn’t need to become an elaborate project. The goal is simply to make sure that the next time someone works on your website, you’re not hunting through Google trying to figure out which LinkedIn page is actually yours.

You Don’t Need to Have Everything Today

If you’ve gotten this far and realized, “I have absolutely no idea where half of this stuff is,” don’t panic.

Start collecting what you do have.

Create one central folder for your website and brand assets. Add your logo files. Add your best photos. Start a document with your brand colors, fonts, social links, and other information.

Then make a list of what’s missing.

Some things can simply be recreated.

Don’t have a current headshot? Get a new one.

Don’t have a bio? Write one.

Can’t find your brand colors? Have someone identify and document them.

Have testimonials scattered through years of emails? Start collecting the best ones now.

The point isn’t to magically recover every file your business has ever created. The point is to stop losing important assets going forward.

Your Website Files Belong to Your Business

Your web designer may have copies of your logo. Your photographer may still have your headshots. Your hosting company may have backups. Your old marketing person may have that beautifully organized folder you’re hoping still exists.

Great.

But none of those people should be your filing system.

Your business needs its own copies of its important digital assets.

That way, if you redesign your website, change web designers, move hosting companies, update your branding, or simply need a new brochure printed three years from now, you’re not starting from scratch.

And if your current website has reached the point where you’re gathering all these pieces because you’re ready for something new, take a look at my WordPress web design services. I build websites for service-based businesses with the SEO, copy, and website strategy considered as part of the build rather than treated as separate pieces afterward.

Website Files and Assets to Keep

Here’s a quick reference you can use to start organizing your own website and brand files.

You may not need every one of these files tomorrow.

But when you do need one, you’ll be very glad you know exactly where it is.