Website ownership

aca101

Myself and my aunt run are running a clothes shop and we recently engaged a free-lance developer to set up an ecommerce site for the shop. The website domain name was registered and paid for by us. However the site is to be hosted by the developer. The copyright at the bottom of the homepage will say it is copyrighted by us.

Things have been a little fractious during the development process but the site is due to go live in the next month. There is no contract in place with the developer specifying as to who exactly the website will belong to. Should I be concerned that he might claim ownership of the site after it has gone live as he is hosting it? Or is the fact that the domain is registered in my name and the site will be under my copyright enough to ensure ownership on our part?

Would be great to get some advice on this as we're a little worried!

maccored

Just make sure he gives you an invoice saying you are renting the server off him per annum and that all content is yours. Make sure you have agreed, in writing (I usually put this info on the invoice) that you own the domain, the databases and the content. should you then decide to move you server/developer, you'll at least be able to bring the site itself with you. Preferably make sure you have the access information to update the domain and ftp & control panel access to the server as that way you can download the database and site contents to your own computer and have your own backup.

uck51js9zml2yt

Ask him for a copy of the files. You paid him to develop it. it belongs to you.

As tatranska said, ask for a copy of the files, but also ask for a dump of the database.

However, all things being equal, in your shoes, I'd rather have the site running on hosting that I pay for and control myself.

cormee

If you paid for it, it's your site. You don't need a written contract to claim ownership of something you purchased.

Graham

Arguing about copyright and who owns what is all rather academic if your e-commerce site is taken offline by a disgruntled developer.

To expand on the suggestion from SBS, I would suggest a fairly immediate separation of responsibilities.

Use the existing site/hosting as a development/staging site, this is the one that your developer works on, makes changes/fixes on etc etc etc.

Setup your own hosting with a separate provider which will act as the 'live' version of your e-commerce site. Do not give your developer access to this site (this may mean you need to seek additional help from somebody qualified to configure/manage this on your behalf).

I'm not suggesting your developer will try and stiff you but if he already has the bulk of his fee and can ultimately threaten to close your operation down in seconds, the balance of power in any fractious negotiations is not in your favour.

In the meantime, make sure you take daily backups:
Full site backups (e.g. all the html, images, css, javascript etc etc etc)
Full database backups (without these the site backup is fairly useless)

Also make sure you have a copy of your ssl cert.

All of this may cost you a few quid but it will be small change compared to the cost of developing your entire e-commerce site from scratch.