[totaltec]

Here is the deal. If you give someone savvy, any type of access at all, whether it is ftp, cpanel, or just the template editor, you have given them everything they need in order to do whatever they like.

That is why the level of trust needs to be extremely high, and you should only work with devs that you trust implicitly. One concern that most never realize, is the access to their client base and email lists that they are giving out. It amazes me sometimes to think of the amount of harm that a non-trustworthy dev could do.

That being said, we have a large number of people on this forum that can be trusted, Steve, BCSE, Phil, Jon, Bill, Padriac just to name a few. You can easily form a relationship with the dev of your choice, and have them install the template for you. You could ask for instructions from this company, and have them just send you the files. All of this should be being done on a dev copy of your live site anyway. I know that some people will work directly on your live site, and I can't blame them really, but it seems extremely foolish to me.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to fix some emergency caused by some other technician, who many times did not even make a full backup before they started working. Even when there is an existing dev site in operation, they still decided to go in and work directly on the live site, without a copy of the db or the files.

I have several clients that only allow me access to the dev site, and when I am finished and everything is perfected, they make the changes to the live site per my instructions. To me, that is the only way to truly manage the risk.