Change All the Passwords!

Every so often I need to go through my site to see if links to projects are still valid. If the current site doesn't look like what I made, I can't send people there to see my work.

I recently went to a site and (thanks to my laziness and saving passwords in my browser) the admin username populated and there were dots in the password field. It's been a few years since I worked on this project. Surely the password wouldn't still work. Right?

I couldn't fight the temptation. I clicked login. AND I GOT IN! I immediately started nervous giggling, imagining the client tracking this rouge admin login to my location and then questioning my motives. Think about it though, if they haven't changed the admin password in low these many years, they aren't monitoring logins.

They're lucky. I'm not malicious. I have no need to be. We ended the project successfully and went out separate ways. Even if it were the worst project/client/site I'd ever working on I'd never be that awful.

So my protip for you is to change passwords when the project is over. If you parted on good terms or bad, change passwords. Admin, ftp, control panel... change passwords.