Help

Business
1

I read Ians book last year and thought it was great, but my business started to get busy and I decided to hire a company-big mistake, at least the company that I chose. The site is less that impressive but worse than that I don’t think their designers know anything about SEO (really). I can’t even find my site by putting in the company name, the only way to get there is to put in the exact web address. So here is my question-how do I wrestle control back from this incompetent company, do they own the code they wrote? Can I copy it and start over? I didn’t write any of the code but I did provide them with the look of the site and that is exactly what I got back, there was not one creative suggestion from their end. By the way they are not hosting my site. Any help would be appreciated.

Bob w

2

What does your contract say? Generally, a designer hands control of a site over to the domain owner, but that should have been in your contract.

3

Unless the contract says otherwise, they own the code and you have a license to use it as you wish, but not to resell it.

The design is yours as you stated.

So what is the problem with getting it back if you are hosting it yourself?

4

You contracted them out to do the work, so essentially you would own the work. If I wee you I’d start moving everything over to your own servers where they don’t have access before you tell them you’ll no longer be working with them. I’d also be sure to mention to them down the line their poor quality of work.