Web development - License CSS/Markup/Code
-
In development of a website, is it typical for the developer to retain rights to the CSS, Markup and other Coding? If so, why is this done?
-
They want to keep ownership so they have the classes, framework or whatever for reuse for future clients, increasing their profits. But I think that is slightly different to having a licence agreement and as you say with that model you could become prone to unreasonable fees.
-
If he's got a clause like that in his contract, it may be indicative of broader issues looming. You may want to reconsider developers.
-
Hi Demetrios,
As the other replies have said, no, it's definitely not typical. I would be a little concerned if this is a typical contract clause for this developer.
Thanks,
Greg -
Another point, how much of that code is learnt from or copied from other sources? Would he even have the right to call it his own?
-
Imagine getting a house build and then signing a rental agreement??
I build complied sites in MVC using visual studio, when I click publish, it compiles my code and produces a website on the server. If you wanted to make any changes at a later date you would need the Visual Studio project, I always give clients a copy of this project so they can do so.
-
Yea that's what I figured. I haven't paid anything to the developer so will wait for his response to removing that clause from the contract. The contract states he will license it to me, which makes no sense to me. Why would I paid you to program something for me, then it gets licensed to me. Then at anytime you can stop the licensing and hold my site hostage. Makes no sense..
-
I have been a computer programmer / web developer for over 20 years and no it is not.
I would tell them to take a hike, if you have already passed over any cash then I would ask for it back , if they did not tell you this before taking the money.
-
yep, if you paid for it you would like to own the copy right. If they keep it, then they can resell it to anyone legally, which I'm sure you would not be happy about.
-
Hi Demetrios,
The webdev companies I've worked with didn't posses the rights to the code. We always claim ownership of the source code and all others properties in every project.
Regards,
Pieter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Core Web Vitals hit Mobile Rankings
Hey all, Ever since Google announced "Core Web Vitals" are mobile rankings have nose-dived. At first, I thought it was optimisation changes to the page titles we had made which might still be part of the issue. However, Desktop rankings actuallyy increased for the same pages where mobile decreased. There is the plan to introduce a new ranking signal into the Google algorithm called the "core web vitals: and this was discussed around late May. even though it's supposed to get fully indexed into a ranking signal later this year or early next; I think Google continuously test and release this items before any official release. If you weren't aware, there is a section in Google Webmaster Tools related to "core web visits", which looks at:1. Loading2. Interactivity3. Visual StabilityThis overlays some of the other basic requirements of a good website and mobile experience. Taking a look at our Google Search Console, it appears to be the following:1. Mobile- 1,006 poor URLs, 100URLs need improvement and 475 good URLs.2. desktop- 0 poor URLs, 379 need improvements and 1,200 good URLsSOURCE: https://search.google.com/search-console/core-web-vitals?resource_id=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.griffith.ie%2FIn the report, we can see two distinct issues with the mobile pages:CLS Issue: more than 0.25 (mobile)- 1,006 casesLCP issue: longer than 4secs (mobile) - 348 case_CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)This is a developer issue, and needs fixing. It's basically when a mobile screen jumps for the user. It is explained in this article: https://web.dev/cls/Seems to be an issue with all pages. **LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)_**Again, another developer fix that needs to be implemented. It's connected to page speed, and can be viewed here: https://web.dev/lcp/Looking at GCS, it looks like the blog content is mostly to blame.It's worth fixing these issues and again looking at the other items on page speed score tests:1. Leverage browser caching- https://gtmetrix.com/reports/griffith.ie/rBtvUC0F2. https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=griffith.ie- mobile score for home page is 16/100, https://www.griffith.ie/people/thamil-venthan-ananthavinayagan is 15/100I think here is the biggest indicator of the issue at hand. Has anybody else noticed their mobile rankings go down and desktop stay the same of increase.Kind regards,
Web Design | | robhough909
Rob
0 -
Opencart vs. Wordpress/Woo
There are two issues facing me today. One is that my two e-commerce stores need updating after some 4 years, but I am seriously considering switching from Opencart to Wordpress/Woo. Opencart is a nightmare to work with at the best of times. Whenever I try to edit the footer of my current sites for instance nothing changes, the customisation of pages is sloppy and although the site works fine for perhaps the first 6 months, anytime after that it just slowly falls apart. Wordpress however features incredible customisation, is easy to edit the code but it lacks the backend functionality that Opencart is good at. Does anyone know the downsides of changing to Wordpress/Woo in respect to SEO?
Web Design | | moon-boots0 -
Rich snippets tool/ schemer.org update?
We have a domain in the netherlands that shows stars (rich snippets) in adwords and in the organic search results. As we do the the in rich snippets test tool we see some errors as shown in the attachments, the errors are shown in review aggregate - but stars are stil shown in paid and organic search. Do we need to follow-up these errors? Do they influence ranking - or the stars in the near future? Z0fCKRW
Web Design | | remkoallertz1 -
Responsive Web Design WordPress Template Suggestions
Does anyone have any RWD WP templates they would suggest? It's for a friend of mine that is starting a local solar panel installation company. For the beginning, he likely will not have more than a handful of categories and subcategories. I'd say no more than 50 total pages. Any suggestions would help. He doesn't want to spend more than $50 - $100, but he's not married to that figure if it's worth it. Thanks everyone, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
TOP 5 Questions I Should Ask a web designer or developer?
I want to redesign my website to work better with SEO and crawls. I need to make sure I hire a good designer/developer but I don't have a ton of money to spend. What are the top 5 questions I should ask a web designer/developer to ensure they are good designers and have successfully implemented SEO??...or at least a site that is crawled well and has some SEO built in.
Web Design | | CapitolShine0 -
Question for a developer out there...
I have a random question form someone who is a developer. I"m not sure if this is the right place to post this question, but figured it was worth a shot. I have the Yoast SEO plug in installed, and it this plug in is duplicating some of the functions of my theme and as a result I have some duplicate html and meta data in my source code. From what I can tell it looks like both my theme and and the YOAST plug in are duplicating meta description, canonical url, and maybe a few other things that I can't really understand. I was wondering if anyone knew of what the best way to fix something like this, and if these issues are having any negative effects on my site / SEO? Thanks so much.
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
Development site accidentally crawled - Will this cause problems?
We are currently developing a new version of our website and to make it easy to access for all team members, we just set it up on a server accessible via a publicly accessible domain name (ie devsite.com). There has been no SEO and no links created to this site, or so I thought. Recently, I found out that Google somehow found its way to this development site and has been indexing the pages! I was a little alarmed, as there are no links to the domain and we'll soon be transitioning all the content over to our primary production domain. I immediately created a robots.txt file to disallow access to the entire development domain. My fear is that there may be some duplicate content penalty if Google sees that the content that is on our new site (once it goes live and is pushed to our REAL domain name) was previously indexed on our test domain. We're slated to launch in 2-3 weeks. Is there anything else I should do? Should I even be worried? I'm probably a bit paranoid, but given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this new site, I love any advice or thoughts. Thank You!
Web Design | | AndrewY0 -
Any discussions on the actual web page design and how it might affect SEO?
Are there any links to previous discussions or tips, techniques for how creative design has any impact on seo??
Web Design | | theideapeople1