I’ve met a lot of small business owners over the years who are being held hostage by their web developers.
Before you become one of them, or even if you are a hostage now, you can do certain things to make sure that you aren’t unwillingly at the mercy of your web developer. And like the recent CarFax ad’s, if your web developer isn’t willing to set your website up this way, question whether you have a reputable web developer.
The first item that should be yours is your domain (e.g. something.com). Once you, or you and your web developer have decided on a name, and it is available, you need to register the name you want with one of a bunch of domain registrars. In the old days, last decade, you were forced to use Network Solutions, now you can use virtually anyone—GoDaddy is one that is inexpensive and well known. (if nothing for their somewhat tasteless ads on the Super Bowl).
When you have your domain registered (or do it yourself) you want to have three things done:
- You want the account the domain is registered to be in your company’s name. Don’t let your web developer put the domain on their account because it is easier. Make them, or take the time, to get your account with your domain registrar.
- Have the domain registered with your company name listed as the domain owner or registrant. Generally if you have done step 1, that will happen automatically.
- Have the administrative contact listed as yourself, or someone in your company. They’ll want your name, address, email and possibly a phone number. But being the administrative contact means that notices about your domain will go to you. I don’t see any problem listing your web developer as the technical contact.
I would suggest having the billing come to you, which again generally will happen if you have an account created with the registrar in your company’s name. If you don’t want to deal with renewing every year, sign the domain up for 5 or 10 years at a time. By having the billing come to you, you can avoid having a domain become inactive and possibly registered by someone else simply because someone at the web developer missed renewing your domain.
Similarly I would recommend setting up your hosting account directly billed to your company. I would also insist that you be given the root, or primary, log in information. Even if you never plan of logging into your website, having that information is important should you end up parting ways with your web developer, especially if the parting is less than friendly. You want be able to switch developers and the new web developer will need to access your website to make any changes.
There might be exceptions that make sense. For instance I’ve done a couple of Drupal websites and hosted them on a multi-site installation on my server. They took very little resources and I bill the clients $50 a year, mostly to remind them they are being hosted on my server. I also backup their entire configuration and send it to them so should they want to change to their own hosting they can just install, or have installed, Drupal and all their customizations.
Finally make sure that any agreement you have with your web developer specifies that all design and programming is done as a work for hire. That transfers any copyright to the design and programming to you so there isn’t any question about your ownership of your website.
Don’t get held hostage any more.