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How do I recover a hijacked Web site?

I need some advice. My wepage is more or less being held ransom by my webmaster because of her knowledge of html. If I need to make a change of any kind I need to wait a week plus for anything to get done. Now, she wants to charge me an up-front fee for any changes before they are done. I can't even put on any links because I have to check with her first. How tuff is it to use html and if I was able to learn it how can I get my web page away from her?

Dave's Answer:

First off, I'm so sorry you've gotten into this position and I have to say that I'm not entirely surprised: while the vast majority of web designers and webmasters are upstanding and ethical professionals, yours is not the first story I have heard of a web consultant holding a site hostage.

The most important question to ask is whether you own your domain or not. This can be ascertained by going to whois.net and checking your domain information record. The key field is "Administrative". For example, a check of dailycamera.com shows that the administrative contact is The E. W. Scripps Company, which makes sense.

If your domain is clearly owned by you, you're in good shape. You can contact the web hosting company and tell them that you want to switch it over to a new account and simply shut the old one down and take posession of the Web site without even interacting with this troublesome webmaster.

If not, then you have a legal problem. Dig through your old email and ensure that you have some sort of written record that she registered the domain on your behalf and that payment of one of the invoices she sent you included "domain registration" or similar as a line item. Those could prove critical. Email her and tell her you need her to properly update the domain record to reflect that you're the owner. If she refuses, I'd consider calling a lawyer.

It is possible that you don't have a domain set up and that what you have is a small web site that lives on comcast.com or similar. It might look like http://www.comcast.com/~somebizname or similar. This is also a bit tricky because it'll depend on who owns the account within which the site is set up. If that's you, easy, just change the password. If it's her, well, again, you're going to need to ask her to make a "snapshot" or "archive" of the site, set up a new account, and unpack the archive there. Your web hosting company can doubtless assist with this.

Finally, HTML isn't incredibly difficult to learn, but if the page is complex or has a sophisticated layout or featureset, it can indeed be quite tricky to work with and the slightest missed '/' or '<' could easily break the entire layout and leave your pages looking very strange indeed.

Having talked about all of these alternatives, I suggest that your very best first step is to sit down and talk with your webmaster, express all of your concerns and frustrations, and ask her to propose a mutually acceptable solution. If you can't find agreement, then it's a perfectly reasonable moment to state that you are going to start looking for someone else to help you with your site development and that "of course" you know you can count on her help with the transition.

Good luck.

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Comments

There's also the question of who "owns" the web pages. Did the webmaster write them? Is there any contract that states who owns the resulting code? Does the webmaster retain the copyright, or does the person who hired her hold the copyright?

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that, if there is nothing in writing, then it gets messy, and depends on the exact business relationship between them. (ie: employer/employee, contractor, independent contractor, etc.)

If the webmaster holds the copyright, then she has the legal rights to require any changes to go through her, regardless of the status of the domain and the hosting account.

Posted by: Ken B at April 22, 2009 11:02 AM

That's a good point, Ken, but more likely than not, the court would look on it as a Work For Hire relationship, in which case the person paying for the work owns the product of the work effort unless otherwise clearly indicated by the contractor. IANAL either. :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 22, 2009 10:22 PM

The original question did not appear to say that the Webmaster was trying to force the writer to stay hostage to them. The word "hostage" was used in a loose sense by the site owner, because he felt unable to do anything on his own with the site, due to HTML being used. At most the Webmaster could be accused of not bothering to implement a CMS for the site, possibly due to a small budget originally, or possible due to some personal gain by keeping it to HTML -- or possibly because the Webmaster did not know how to do it. He/she was not really accused of doing a site "kidnapping". In my years in the field, the only hostage holding I have seen done was by a large Internet registrar that used complex contracts, and threats, to prevent loss of accounts -- many of you know who that is!

Posted by: David - green thoughts at May 11, 2009 9:36 AM

So what's he going to do once he "wrestles" control away? Badger the next guy with excessive neediness, too? I'm not convinced the webmaster is the entire issue here. This is a communication problem & an unclear contract.

This enthusiastic guy is a great candidate for a CMS system, but that's not what he paid for. He hired a designer to put up a static HTML site, & now he's frustrated that he can't update & fiddle around with it as often as he'd like.

I strongly suspect that the webmaster feels like this fellow's demands are an excessive drain on her resources. He's most likely not paying enough for the level of attention he desires.

If the two of them sat down & actually worked out how much of her time he can reasonably expect for what he pays, & what he would need to pony up for more attention, that would be a good start.

He should also probably start budgeting for a new Joomla site. Or a copy of Dreamweaver & some lessons if he wants to keep it cheap & DIY.

Posted by: ffelix at October 26, 2009 1:45 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!