Short story, I developed a asp site on a shared hosted server, not my server for a client. They did not have the money at the time to pay, so I offered really great terms.

It is looking like they may not pay.

They are requesting all the passwords for the site. However this is all I have to hold over there head so I can get paid. Also, they could get the passwords from the hosting company if they tried really hard. So i really don't have much.

Question, is there a way to make add line of code in one of the pages that would display a non-payment msg on the screen after so many days, like 90 days from now. And the only way for them to remove it is by calling me?

Edited by - ski1535 on 02 Aug 2007 04:06:27

A very clean way to handle something like this that is both ethical and effective would be to host the DB on a server you control and once all payment have been made - move the db to their server and change the connection to point to their server.

This way if they refuse to pay - they don't get the db - nor for that matter their data.

A database backend site isn't worth much without the db - so as the old saying goes... information is power and the person that controls the information / data has all the power.

I've done this for clients that want extremely flexible terms - and I've had absolutely no problem getting paid.

Thanks for the idea. And I have kind of accomplished this. The db is located on my server. However, the login info to the database can be located with-in the asp pages, if someone knew where to look.

It doesn't matter if they have the login information for the db or not. If they don't pay - change the name of the tables used on their site - at that point the site is dead.

Good point. I maybe over thinking this a bit. But they could in theory do a backup of the db before I realized it.

If the db lives on a server you control - they don't have access to the structure and thus can not back it up or copy it.

Can they connect to the sql db through Access and perform a backup under the file menu? I have used this before to move data between db.

Well... if you're using MS Access... you can't really do this. The db almost has to live on the same hosting space... but if you're using a real db such as MS SQL or MySQL... there is no way to get to the structure of the db.

btw... just to be clear here. The only time I would do this would be if someone wanted me to give them a long time to pay off the project... otherwise if it's a normal project with normal payment terms - the db gets deployed along with their site files - once they pay off the balance.

Correct, I'm using MSSQL, and I was not sure if that would work tring to sneak in using access. But I agree with you, give the server login info, and keep the sqldb pwd to myself, and release upon full payment. However, Legally I'm not sure where I would stand. All the courts would do is send it to arrbitration (sp) and who know where that would end up, contract or not. So I was thinking putting a piece of code on the registration page that would error the page after so many days of non-payment. But not sure if that would work either.

Anyway, thanks for the support and info.