A question I get more often than you would expect, usually a few months into a working relationship that has gone quiet or sour, is this: does my website actually belong to me? The short answer is that you paid for it, so it should. The real answer is that a website is several separate things, and a different person can own each one.
This is a plain walk through those things, so you can check your own setup in about twenty minutes without being technical. I am a developer and not a lawyer, so treat this as practical orientation and read your contract for the legal detail.
The domain name
Your domain is the address, something like yourbusiness.co.uk. It is the one thing you most need to own, because everything else can be rebuilt but the address your customers and Google already know cannot.
A domain is registered to a named person or company, called the registrant. It should be you or your business. Too often it is the developer or an old agency, who registered it to save you the bother. Some registrars hide personal details in a public lookup, so the reliable test is simpler: can you log in to the registrar account yourself? And whose email address gets the renewal reminders? If it is a former developer's inbox, a missed renewal can take your site and your email offline with nobody warning you.
Hosting
Hosting is the server that holds your site files and database. Ask yourself one question: if I fell out with my developer tomorrow, could I get a full copy of my site? If the hosting account is in your name, yes. If the developer resells hosting to you, that can be perfectly reasonable, but find out whether you can take a copy away and what it would cost. I broke down the ongoing numbers in what a website costs to run each year, and ownership of the account is worth checking while you are looking at them.
The content and the code
Your words, photos and logo are yours if you supplied them. Stock photos are different: you usually hold a licence to use them, not ownership, so keep a note of where each one came from.
Code is where it gets less obvious. WordPress itself is open source. Many themes and plugins are sold on a licence, and the licence key is tied to an account. If that account is in the developer's name, updates can stop the day they leave. Custom code written for you is a separate matter. As I understand it, in the UK the person who writes work for you generally holds the copyright unless a contract says otherwise. Plenty of developers hand everything over. Some agencies keep the custom theme and rent it back to you through a monthly fee. That is not automatically wrong, but you should know which deal you have signed.
The accounts nobody thinks about
Check three more places. Google Search Console and Google Analytics, because they hold your history of how people find you. And your Google Business Profile, which matters a great deal for anyone trying to be found locally in Hull. In each one, make sure you are an owner and not only a user. If a former agency is the sole owner, getting that back can take weeks.
A twenty minute ownership check
Domain: your name or your company's name as registrant, your email on the account, auto renew switched on.
Hosting: you can log in, or you know who can and you have it in writing that you can get a full copy.
WordPress: you have your own administrator login, not a shared one that someone else controls.
Licences: premium theme and plugin licences are registered to an email address you control.
Google: you are an owner on Search Console, Analytics and your Business Profile.
Contract: it says who owns the design, the custom code and the content after the final payment.
If you can tick all six, you are in better shape than most. If you cannot, nothing is lost yet. It is far easier to fix now than in the middle of a dispute.
What I think is fair
My view is that every account should be set up in the client's name from day one, with the developer added as a user. It costs nothing, it makes handover trivial, and it removes the awkward conversation later. When you are weighing up WordPress development, ask any developer, me included, how they handle this. A clear answer is a good sign. A vague one is worth noting before you sign. It is also a useful line to add when you compare website quotes or brief a web developer.
If you do not own something you should
Ask politely and in writing, naming the specific item: the domain transfer, the hosting backup, the licence keys. Most developers will simply do it. If yours has stopped replying, I wrote about what to do when your web developer goes quiet, and if you need to move the site afterwards, moving WordPress to a new host without downtime covers the practical steps.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on your own setup, I offer a free 30 minute surgery. Bring the list above and whatever logins you have, and I will tell you honestly what you own, what you do not, and what to ask for. You can book one through the contact page.
Free 30-min surgery
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