I heard a story recently about an unfortunate situation between a legal blog designer and one of their clients. The lawyer had a falling out with the developer and was told that if she chose to no longer host the blog with them, she would not be able to take the design or the content. The blog was created on Wordpress, a popular platform that is free for anyone to use. There was no agreement in place ahead of time, so she was at the mercy of the developer in this situation. I am not so much commenting on who is right or wrong in this situation, only that it is important to have the answers to a few questions before you have your blog or website developed. If you have the proper expectations and are on the same page with your blog designer and host, your experience will be that much better.
Here are 5 questions to ask before making your purchase:
1. Do I get to keep the blog design if I choose not to host with you? The answer to this depends on a number of things. Some companies have proprietary software that the blog is created on. The software was created by the blog design company and comes packaged with hosting. If you choose to leave their company, you can not take their software with you. Typically you still own the content you created, but will have to move it to another platform if you want to leave. However, some legal blogs are designed on platforms that are free for anyone to use, such as Wordpress. A company that creates a Wordpress legal blog might offer to host the blog as well for a monthly fee. Make sure you understand ahead of time what happens if you don’t want them to host your blog any longer.
2. Do I get to keep the content I produce? You put the blood, sweat, and tears into writing your legal blog. Just make sure you get to keep whatever content you spent the time to produce.
3. What kind of changes can I make to the layout myself, such as adding elements to the blogroll, etc? Your blog is a dynamic, evolving thing. You might want to add different elements to your blog as time passes. Most blogs give you the ability to add links to a blogroll, but maybe you want your Twitter feed on the sidebar of your blog too. In any case, make sure you understand the extent to which you can add something to your blog yourself or what you need to make requests for.
4. Do I own the domain name? If you go with a personalized domain name, make sure you own the domain name for your blog even if your blog company takes care of registering it for you. I’ve heard of situations where firms put in the effort to build the authority and get their domain name ranked only to find out later on their designer owned the domain.
5. Can I get this in writing? It’s funny I am even mentioning this to lawyers, but unfortunately I have seen too many verbal agreements between developers and firms. Better that everyone is on the same page before a problem arises, not afterwards.
Photo by Leo Reynolds
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I have a little experience with both sides of this debate, having once owned a website company and now being a blogging lawyer. I haven’t checked out the big blog design players in the lawyer space because I’m a DIY’er, but it’s not that uncommon for there to be a very thin subscription agreement that is light on the design elements.
Industry standards will prevail in a dispute and these are: (1) unless you paid a boatload of money for a custom design, you won’t own rights to your design (even a boatload of money is not a guarantee); (2) your content is always yours, but you better be sure that you’re backing it up on a regular basis to an off-site space that you control in case there is a dispute with your host/designer; (3) blogrolls and other widgets are not “design” — they are more like “content,” but unless they are tied to a third party (as in external to your blog) service, you’re going to have a hard time taking them to a new blog host; (4) do not EVER let your designer/host register and/or control your dn — it is too easy for unscrupulous hosts to hold the name hostage (register at GoDaddy and point the name to your host); and (5) the scope and breadth of the agreement you can expect are probably directly correlated to the expense of the subscription — many web hosts run on the cheap to be competitive and the agreement, if there is one, is going to be thin.
If you can get a detailed contract, great. If you can’t, be aware of industry standards and allocate your risks accordingly. Allocating risks should be easy enough for a lawyer, right?
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