Regaining ownership of a site

[Professor Chalk]

Hi there,
I hope this is in the right forum, apologies if it's not.

Anyway, a friend of mine had a website built 4 years ago by a company. She has been with them to date, but now wants to switch to a different developer for a fresh start. She wants to take the same domain because it has a good ranking on Google, but revamp a lot of the site visually with the new developer.

She has been paying a registration fee to the company for maintenance etc. They look after the hosting and email etc.

Where does she stand in terms of getting full ownership of the site? Are they obliged to hand over all the hosting info etc, or can they block this from happening somehow and tie her in to remaining with them?

Any tips and advice would be very much appreciated.

 

[louie]

She paid for the website to be developed an also for the domain name, so in short words she owns them full stop.
Before she/he decides to move to another developer and / or hosting provider, make sure they get full FTP access and download a copy of the entire website including the database if any.
Just in case.

 

[mneylon]

The domain should have been registered in your friend's name - you can check that
Also check what was being paid for. The content might be your friend's, but the code might be the developer's ..

 

[Professor Chalk]

The domain should have been registered in your friend's name - you can check that
Also check what was being paid for. The content might be your friend's, but the code might be the developer's ..

Thanks for the reply. I checked the whois of the domain and the Registrar is listed as "DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM". I'm not sure if this means that whoever registered the domain on her behalf did so through this site and didn't list her name as the owner or not? And if this is the case, does it lessen her right to claim back full ownership of the domain?

Thanks a lot for the help!

 

[mneylon]

DirectI are the registrar
What you need to check is the registrant and admin contacts

 

[Professor Chalk]

DirectI are the registrar
What you need to check is the registrant and admin contacts

Ok, found another whois lookup that gave me more info. The registrant seems to be a Slovenian person, their address is in Slovenia. The developers of this site were an Irish company so that seems strange. The Admin, Technical and Billing Contact info are all the same as the Registrant details.

 

[mneylon]

Well if that's the case then your friend will need to resolve the issue with whoever designed the site