Copying a website

marbar

is it possible to copy a website? as in, copy the file of a website (like copying a powerpoint or word doc), having it sent to you in a format, and then altering the design as you wish?

background: two people paid for a company website and are going their separate ways. rather than fight over who owns it, can they each just take a version of it and skin as they wish without having to pay for full development all over again?

if the answer is yes, what should they ask the web developers to provide them?

thanks for any answers.

M.T.D

Yes it is generally possible to clone a website. Whether it is necessarily a good idea is another matter.

If you end up with two websites with the same content but in different colours then there is the probability of only one or maybe neither ranking in Google.
If you are intending to write new content for one of the sites then from the Google view the colours can be the same.

If the site has been developed in one of the popular cms type sites Wordpress, Joomla, etc then cloning the site is relatively easy and editing the content so that the sites are sufficiently different would be all you would need to do. Remembering to change all url references.

As the content will need editing, to get maximum benefit from the changes, it could/should be done with SEO considerations as a priority

marbar

thanks MDT. what should I ask the developers for in that case?
should i set up different hosting, and then ask them to copy the site and apply it there?

M.T.D

OSI makes a good point, there is a possibility your developers won't just do you a copy and as I said it is not necessarily a good idea anyway.
Creating and SEO of the content and initial promotion Google pack etc. often, costs/is worth, more, for a general brochure website, than the "design".
An unoptimised, unpromoted website is often a waste of money.
You do not say what kind of site it is brochure, ecommerce.... or how much you spent on the, design, SEO, promotion etc.
If it is a brochure website and you have spent under 2k then do a new site, maybe try and get a contribution from the party that keeps the original site but getting/doing a copy and then changing design, content, SEO would be more effort than doing a new site.

If it is a 20k+ ecommerce site with lots of special functions then that is a different matter.

marbar

it's not a brochure site, but one for recruitment with log in and application capability. nothing particularly fancy, it's just the cost and effort involved of creating a new one that would be the biggest barrier
maintaining the original URL would have an impact on SEO though yeah?...so it might be possible to use a copy of the site (i say copy because i would like to move away from the developers) or the original version on the same URL, and the other partner could change the content on another copy of the site and a new URL...either way there would be no need for a complete redevelopment by either partner

Graham

OSI wrote: »

As I said, you really need to read you contract and discuss with the developer. It is highly unlikely that you own the code, so copying and modifying the code will put you in breach of the contract and could see some nice legal action from the developers.

Assuming the web-app/site was custom developed (rather than a customised off the shelf package), it would be most unusual for the customer not to own the code.

OP is the existing site based off some sort of commercial package or was it a ground-up custom project?

marbar

it was a ground up project. we had an idea for how it would look and function, and they built it that way for us.
there's every chance that they used the base of something they had built previously (i would imagine, i'm not technical in a web development sense). i don't have the capability to copy it on my own, so any request would be routed through the developer anyway

Graham

marbar wrote: »

it was a ground up project. we had an idea for how it would look and function, and they built it that way for us.
there's every chance that they used the base of something they had built previously (i would imagine, i'm not technical in a web development sense). i don't have the capability to copy it on my own, so any request would be routed through the developer anyway

As others have suggested, best bet is to go have a chat with the developer. There's every chance they'd be only to happy to create a clone of the site, particularly if there's customisation work heading in their direction for one of the copies.

marbar

thanks for all the advice guys

good to knwo that it is possible. it might go a long way to easing the process