I’ve been mulling this over for a while and after a meeting yesterday with a client I figured that I’d write about this topic. I’ve been building and operating websites since 1996. I’ve seen just about everything from shoddy code, bad implementations, oversold capabilities and more. I’ve also seen a lot of great work from my peers.

But, there is one thing out there that I really feel is unethical and that is when web designers subscribe their clients to services and don’t give the clients access to them. Another thing I loathe is when a web design firm does domain registration for a client and “takes care of it” for them - more on that in a minute.

I’m seeing more and more situations where someone will sign up for some kind of a Google account - like Analytics - and not give the client access. Note to those out there - make sure you do this yourself and give the web designer the code and/or access to the account. Even better, in cases where an employee who is managing your site may leave - have them sign up under a generic account and get the username/password.

The other one that really gets me is this domain thing. I have see clients held hostage because when they decide they want to leave a web design firm for another - the former will hold their domain hostage as leverage. Note to self - always buy your own domain names. If a web firm buys a domain on your behalf - there’s a very good chance that you don’t really own it. And, that can be bad if the relationship sours - especially if it’s yourcompanyname.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Domains, Web Development.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.