Having done a fair amount of freelance work, I have a lot of experience with different types of clients. Some are easy to work with, some difficult. Some pay you on time, some argue over money but pay you in a timely manner, some take a bit to pay you but just cause they’re lazy and you get the money eventually. Then there are the deadbeats. You do a site for them, you put it up in good will, and they don’t pay you. You send them an email asking for payment, they side step you and still don’t pay. What do you do to protect yourself against this?

You could say “I’m gonna take the site down within 10 days if I don’t receive payment.” This is all well and good, but what if the client decides that they’re gonna change their FTP password and lock you out? You’re screwed.

Since I am currently dealing with a deadbeat client, I thought of how I could negotiate this. Then I realized….PHP!

PHP can change (and delete!) directories on a server. So by hiding a simple PHP script on the clients site, one which only you would know how to get to, you can put a little insurance in there that will let you delete the entire site by simply going to a URL.

Here’s a link to the code that I am using (thanks to Kunal Patel for the link )

Recursive Directory Delete with PHP