What steps are necessary to take control of and revise a website framework created with WordPress, before making substantive posts?

I modified once a Wordpress theme. From this http://www.blogohblog.com/wordpress-theme-dailypress (test http://wpthemes.blogohblog.net) I made this http://www.mytestbox.com. I had Wordpress 2.8 or 2.9, I think, at that time, I upgraded to the latest and the theme still works. So, if your designer worked the theme for version 3.1.4 and you are thinking to upgrade to the latest you won't have problems in doing that. If your designer finished his work then it's normal to ask to give the admin password to you (don't forget to change it afterwards so only you will know). If you want to tweak his design you will have to know what you are doing...you may want to change some CSS (you can from the Editor), you may want to change some graphics (you need to have FTP access so you can download the theme's graphic files, modify them, then upload again), maybe the designer built some tools specifically for that theme which you now have to use but you need the admin password. In any case, whatever the design you want to modify this should not affect your postings (or any of the content). The theme is just the presentation. You can go ahead and post. Check out also my Wordpress related answers here:

If you have your server access details I can reset the Wordpress password for you or tell you how to change it yourself. Basically you need control over the following: Domain lease. Domains are leased using a domain registrar. You need the username and password that owns the lease so that you can control it and renew the lease when the time runs out. Hosting details. All websites are hosted on a server somewhere... You need the username and password to control that server. Wordpress admin power. You need the admin privileges, and if your friendly developer goes rogue, you need to have an admin account for you only so he can't access it. If he is sneaky, you need to check your hosting server for hack software that can allow him access to it even if you change all these passwords. Once you've got wordpress power, you can change themes, edit code, edit anything.... This is a case of LEARNING Wordpress. It took me 2 years to learn how to use wordpress properly, but if you've already got a website running, you just need to know how to edit the pages and posts and that's easy. I HIGHLY recommend keeping wordpress up to date. Put simply, the updates are "fixes". They are fixing problems with wordpress that people only discover over time. When a problem is discovered, they fix it. If you do not update and the problem still exists, someone could delete your pages/posts... or change the homepage to sell viagra. I had a wordpress site with a wootheme get hacked by an arab muslim terrorist group and they just changed the front page to say hacked by arab muslim group and a bunch of arab words probably laughing their asses off or something. They changed the passwords so I had to spend hours fixing it and searching through the server for hack software. Turns out it was all caused by a plugin that had a vulnerability because it was not the latest version.