When someone sets up your website what is meant by "who owns the coding."?

Answer 1

If a person works for payday, then the company that pays owns the result of that work. If a person works as a contractor and makes contracts for the work (like I used to do as a free lance programmer for small businesses) then the contract determines what the ownership of the result might be. If I own the code, then I have the right to take it away, which would cripple the business, so business owners don't like that. However, if I have special routines that I have developed over the years which make my programs (or sites) look snazzy or work in special ways, I don't want to give away the ownership or have other people using them or have the other businesses using my code be at risk.
So my contracts would say something like: "the copyright of this material, its appearance and coding, as pertains to your business will be owned by you upon payment of my fees, with the exception of certain routines unique to my programming which are identified in the code and on the list I will give you, for which I retain ownership and give you license to use within code I have developed. Under rules of copyright, you may not sell or give away copies of these routines without my permission and compensation to me."
One of the things that programmers/web developers do to screw their customers is use routines that are loaded from the developers web site or are otherwise hidden, so it the site owner leaves, the developer can shut down or cripple the site. The developers usually label this as "protection" from failure to pay, but they don't undo it when they are paid.

Answer 2

The coding is all the computer language that creates the website. It may be that the site designer retains ownership and copyright of the coding or it may be that you get it as part of the deal - check the small print.

If you want to see an example of coding then right click anywhere on this page apart from on pictures and links and click 'View Source'

Answer 3

its the code used to make the website. Tecnically your suppose to copywrite it and its poperty of the company or the website development company.