Are You Being Held Hostage?
Controlling the ownership of your website and domain name
By Sue Doughty |
Every once in awhile we get a new client who asks us to give their
website a facelift or do some SEO (search
engine optimization) work for them. Unfortunately, an alarming
number of these companies don’t have control of their own
domain name or website. Oftentimes this occurs as a result of a
relationship they have with a previous web designer. Sometimes
the company will have previously had another web designer create
their site and handle all the administrative functions of registering
the domain name and obtaining web hosting for the website. This
is all very normal and usual except for the fact that the company
doing business with the web designer needs to make it crystal clear
who has ownership of the website and domain name.
We recommend that the company has control of its own website and
domain name, not the web designer. We also recommend that you have
this understanding when a website design project is first commenced.
This vital and often overlooked detail can wreak havoc later on.
You may find your website or domain name held hostage at some future
date if you decide to change web designers. This may also occur
if you want to move the website to a new web hosting provider or
make changes to the domain registration.
Domain Registration
In the domain registration record there is the registrar,
and the registrant. The registrar is the entity where the
name is registered (such as GoDaddy or Network Solutions). This
is where the domain record is. The registrant is the owner of the
domain name. Make sure your domain record lists your name or company
name as the registrant. The registrant has control over where the
name is registered. The registrant can decide to change the registrar.
You may want to move your domain name from Network Solutions to
GoDaddy. If you are the registrant, you can do that.
The domain record also has a technical contact and an admin contact
as well as a billing contact. You can make the web designer the
technical contact. That is perfectly normal. You, as the registrant,
can change the admin, technical and billing contacts. Make the
billing contact someone who will be responsible for paying the
bill to renew the domain name. Choose someone with a good email
address that won’t lose the important emails the registrar
sends and who will make sure your domain name will not expire.
If you neglect to pay the bill to renew your domain name, you can
lose it.
Web Hosting Account
Make sure you have control over your web hosting account and all
the files, email accounts and databases. This sounds just too elementary
on the surface, but this gets overlooked, too. Here’s one
way. Let’s say you have a shopping cart at your website.
There are many web hosting providers who offer a free or low-cost
shopping cart with your hosting account. Where are the files? Can
you back them up via FTP? (FTP = file transfer protocol – a
means to upload and download files from your website.) Where is
the cart database? Is it in MySQL or other SQL format? Can you
backup your data and restore it to a different hosting provider
should you decide to move it? Where are the scripts? (the programs
that run the cart) Is it a commercially available program or is
it a custom program that is solely owned by the hosting company?
Can you obtain a license for your own copy? Your shopping cart
can be married to that hosting provider if the hosting provider
owns the program and you cannot obtain a license for your own copy.
You may not be able to relocate to a different hosting provider
or make modifications. Your shopping cart might be a dead end in
this situation.
Website Content
We recommend that the company of the website owns the website
content. We have seen copyright notices at some websites where
the copyrights are owned by the web design firm. We believe that
this is not a good idea. Again, what if the company wants to dissolve
their relationship with the designer and move the website to a
new hosting provider and establish a relationship with a new design
firm or SEO firm? It may be that the design firm creates the content.
This can be a substantial amount of work. Still, we recommend that
the company work out the necessary financial arrangements with
the design firm so that they get paid for their work, but that
ultimately the company owns the content. We feel that this is a
much cleaner way to do business.
Your Relationship with The Web Design Firm
If you currently have a good relationship with your web design
firm and conditions exist that are similar to those described in
this article, we recommend you sort them out while your relationship
is still good. It is better to be in a position of cause rather
than effect. If you own your domain name, website and content you
are in the controlling position and can move swiftly should you
need to make modifications or design changes or be able to make
SEO decisions for better search engine positions.
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Sue Doughty is the Marketing Director of Studio 1 Design and Hosting
and has over 15 years experience in her field. Her advice in the
area of search
engine optimization has helped businesses achieve high search
engine placement and success on the Internet. Visit Studio1
Design and Hosting on the Web at http://www.studio1webdesign.com,
email .
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