Do you really know who owns your website?
Do you own your website? Are you sure? Have you checked your registration details? Have you got a back up of the website on CD? Do you have access to the server? Do you know who your registrar and host are? Do you know what to do when your host goes out of business and your designer won’t answer your calls?
If you set up your own website then chances are that your registration details are correct, but it’s always worth checking with whois database to make sure. One of my favourite tools is:
They do a great job of displaying all the public information about your website. But if you are aghast at the thought of your name and address being free to view don’t think you can hide. If you are trading (goods or information) you must keep this information up to date. See this wikipedia article for more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHOIS
Did you know that you are obliged by law to display your contact details on your website…
Updating your details
If you discover that your site designer has given their details as the owner (registrant) then you need to get this changed pronto. If you have access to your host’s control panel it’s fairly simple task to update the owner’s details. This will in turn update the whois database and everything is hunky dory.
On the other hand, if you can’t login to your control panel and your designer won’t hand over the information you have a problem. As far as the law is concerned, they own the website and you have no rights over what they do with it.
This has happened to a colleague. They paid for a website and the designer registered the site in their own name, uploaded to a host and now refuses change the registrant’s details, provide a copy of the site or hand over the login details. The end result is that the proper owner has had to employ a lawyer to resolve the issue.
So what can you do?
In the UK it’s quite simple, Nominet (Internet registry for .uk domain names) has a dispute resolution service: www.nominet.org.uk
Other countries have similar procedures. You will need to find your local registry organisation, this list is pretty up to date but I’m not promising it is 100% accurate:
Domain name registries around the world
It’s also worth checking that your registrar is accredited. It’s easy to find a host but be careful, many of them are re-sellers so unless your new found host is in the following list of accredited registrars then they aren’t the real deal:
What next?
Before you select your designer it’s worth asking a few questions:
Interviewing web developers (20 questions-to-ask)
And when you have found your designer, get it all in writing. Make sure you know who your host is going to be, that you will get a copy of the website and that you have all the login details should your designer decide to be a pain.
If you’re still stuck or want a bit more help then give me a call.