What not to touch on your website

The short list of settings that can take your site offline, why each one matters, and what to do instead when you need one changed.

Most of your website is safe to edit. A handful of settings are not — and the difference is not obvious from the screen, because the dangerous ones look exactly like the harmless ones. This page is the short list.

Quick summary

Seven things can break your site badly enough that you'll need us to fix it: theme or template code, plugins and apps, user roles, permalinks, hosting and DNS, domain and SSL settings, and checkout or payment configuration. Everything else — your words, your images, your pages — you can change freely. When you're not sure, ask before you click.

The short list

Don't change this	Why it matters	What to do instead
Theme or template code	A single misplaced character can take every page of your site offline at once. Undoing it isn't always simple, and often means restoring a backup.	Send us the change. Most visual tweaks don't need code anyway.
Plugins, apps, or extensions	Installing, deleting, or updating one can conflict with another and break a page — or the whole site. Deleting one can delete its data and settings too.	Ask us first. We test updates on a staging copy before they touch your live site.
User roles and permissions	Giving someone administrator access hands them the keys to everything, including the ability to lock you out.	Add people at the lowest level that lets them do their job. See the safe way to add someone below.
Permalinks or URL structure	Changing how your web addresses are built can break existing links to your site all at once: from Google, from other websites, from your own emails. Search rankings can dip, and settling back down can take weeks or longer.	Tell us what you're trying to achieve. There is almost always a way to get it without changing the structure.
Hosting, server, or DNS settings	These control whether your site and your email exist at all. A wrong value here takes both offline, and the fix can take hours to propagate.	Send us the request. If another provider is asking you to "just add a record," forward us the instructions.
Domain or SSL settings	Your domain is the address people type. Your SSL certificate is what stops browsers showing a "Not secure" warning. Both can make your site unreachable.	Never let the domain lapse (see keeping your domain on auto-renew). Send everything else to us.
Checkout or payment settings	This is the part that takes money. A misconfiguration can silently stop orders while the site still looks fine to you.	Ask us, and always place a test order afterwards.

What you can change freely

The list above is short on purpose. Almost everything you actually want to do day to day is safe:

Content

The words on any page
Images and photos
Blog posts and news items
Products, prices, and descriptions
Business hours, addresses, phone numbers
Adding a new page

Settings that only affect content

Page titles and meta descriptions
Alt text on images
Menu labels (the words, not the structure)
Publishing or unpublishing a post
Reordering items in a list

You will not break your site by editing a paragraph. The worst outcome is a typo, and typos are fixable in ten seconds.

Nervous? Change one word first

If you've never edited your site, open any page, change a single word, and preview it. Seeing the change appear does more for your confidence than reading a guide about it. Nothing in the content area of your editor can take the site down.

The golden rule

If you're about to click something and you're not completely sure what it does, stop and ask.

A two-minute message costs you almost nothing. A broken site costs you a day, and sometimes more if it happens on a Friday afternoon. We have never once been annoyed by someone checking first.

The safe way to add a team member

Adding people is the item on the list people get wrong most often, because it's easy to give someone more access than they need.

Decide what they actually need to do. Someone writing blog posts does not need access to your payment settings.

Give them the lowest role that covers it. Editor, Author, or Contributor on WordPress. On Shopify, a role limited to the areas they work in. Not Administrator, unless they genuinely administer the site.

Never share a login. Create a separate account for each person. Shared logins mean you can't tell who changed what, and you can't remove one person without locking out everyone.

Remove access when they leave. The day they leave, not the month after.

Platform specifics: WordPress user roles, adding a WordPress user, Shopify staff accounts, Webflow user roles.

Platform-specific danger zones

Your platform has its own handful of settings worth leaving alone. The relevant section covers them:

WordPress

Plugins, themes, permalinks, and user roles.

WooCommerce

Checkout, tax, and shipping configuration.

Shopify

Theme code, apps, and payment providers.

Webflow

Publishing, hosting, and CMS collection structure.

Squarespace

Custom code, domain settings, site styles, and page addresses.

If you already changed something

Don't try to fix it by changing more things. That's the single most common way a small problem becomes a large one.

Stop. Make no further changes.

Write down what you did. What you clicked, roughly when, and what happened. This tells us which backup to use and saves an hour of guessing.

Tell us. Include the page URL and a screenshot if you can. See how to report a problem.

Most things are recoverable, and how recoverable depends on your backups. On a care plan we back your site up every day, so the worst realistic case is losing the changes made since the last one. If you manage the site yourself, the honest answer is that it depends on whether a recent backup exists — which is worth checking now rather than finding out then. Either way, see restoring your site from a backup.

Common questions

Isn't this my website? Why can't I change my own settings?

It is entirely your website, and you can change anything you want. This page isn't a set of rules — it's a map of where the sharp edges are. Most of these settings are risky because they're hard to undo, not because they're off limits. If you want to make one of these changes yourself, tell us and we'll take a backup first and talk you through it.

I asked and you said no. Why?

We'll say no when a change would break something you can't see — usually SEO, an integration, or an email flow that depends on the current setup. When that happens we'll explain what would break and offer another way to get what you're after. If we can't, we'll say that too.

What if I need something changed urgently and it's out of hours?

If the site is down or checkout is broken, that's an emergency and there's a separate route for it. See when and how to request emergency support. For everything else, see our response times.

Does this apply if I'm not on a care plan?

The risks are identical — but without a care plan, nobody is watching for the consequences, and there may not be a recent backup to restore from. If you manage your own site, the items on this list deserve more caution, not less. See what keeping a website running actually takes.

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.