As the author of the WWW FAQ, I regularly answer questions about the workings of the Web. If a question is frequently asked, I simply add an article to the FAQ. But sometimes a question is more detailed, more in-depth— not really a FAQ, but still of interest to others. You'll find those questions, with my answers, here in Innards along with commentary on other web-technology-related topics.

Q. My company currently has a pretty good site from a marketing standpoint. However, we have very little control over content, meaning we rely on our web designers to make changes and bill us an hourly rate. I would like to make a change and fire our current design company but I have been told that I can't take our current site with us and that the new company will have to rebuild the whole thing. Is this always true?

A. Heck, no. Most contracts stipulate that the site belongs to the company that paid for it... not the designer who built it. The designer might have rights to reuse elements of the site on other jobs (and indeed that's usually appropriate), but they typically can't just pull the plug on your site because you don't wish to work with them any more.

What does your contract say?

Q. In addition, my boss insists that he never wants anyone to have total control of our site but I insist that since we don't have a designer on staff, we would be taking 10 steps back in the layout of our site and it would go back to a very basic format... which is why web designing is full time job. Can you please confirm who is on the right track here? Thanks!

A. You are both right. You need a professional designer, and you need to be able to update your content without involving the designer every time you have anything at all to add.

The right solution is:

1. A signed contract specifying that you own the whole shebang.

2. YOU register your domain with a registrar like register.com or what have you. The designer should NOT have their name on the domain registration.

3. YOU have the business relationship with the web hosting company. You should pay that bill too— not the designer.

4. Your designer builds your site with a CMS (content management system) that allows you to easily update pages and add content, anything that isn't a design issue, by yourself. Examples include OpenCMS, Joomla, Wordpress and (for sites with a more community-like structure) Drupal.

4. Check references thoroughly when hiring a web designer. Make sure they have long-term happy customers.

If a designer doesn't offer a good solution allowing you to update your own pages... don't hire them.