Seven things to get from your web developer before you pay the last invoice

Most website horror stories are not theft. They are neglect plus time: a developer who stops answering email, an agency that folds, a nephew who has moved on. In every one of them the damage comes from the same place — something the business needed was only ever held by somebody else.

The final invoice is the moment everyone is still motivated. Use it.

1. The domain, in your name

Log in to the registrar yourself. See your own business as the registrant. If you cannot log in, you do not control your address, whatever anyone has told you.

2. The DNS, or at least the login to it

DNS is the switchboard that points your domain at your website and your email. Whoever controls it can move both. It is usually at the registrar or the host; you want to be able to see it.

3. The hosting account

Either in your name with your developer invited, or clearly documented as theirs with a written answer to "what happens to my site if we part company". Both are workable. Not knowing which one you have is not.

4. The code, somewhere you can reach it

A repository you have access to, or a zip file you keep. You do not need to read it. Another developer does, and the difference between handing them a repository and telling them to start again is most of the cost of the next project.

5. The content, in an editable form

Your text and your images, in files, not only baked into pages. Photographs especially: full-resolution originals, not the compressed copies on the site. Reshooting is expensive and sometimes impossible.

6. The analytics and the search console

• Analytics tells you how many people visit and what they do. Own the property; do not be a guest on the agency's.
• Google Search Console is how you find out what you are being found for, and where Google will tell you something is broken. It is free, it is per-property, and businesses go years without ever being given it.

7. A written answer to the boring questions

• How do I change a phone number, a price, an opening hour?
• Who renews the domain, and when is it next due?
• What is the monthly for, and what stops if I stop it?
• Where do enquiries from the form actually go, and who checks that they still arrive?

That last one catches more businesses than any of the others. Contact forms fail silently — a mailbox fills, a password changes, a spam filter gets stricter — and a form that has quietly stopped delivering looks identical to a quiet month.

If the answer to any of these is "do not worry about it"

Worry about it. Not because something dishonest is happening, but because "do not worry about it" means it lives in one person's head, and heads leave. Everything on this list takes a competent developer under an hour to hand over, and every hour of it is one you will otherwise pay for twice.