Prevent HTML Source Code Stealing
Recently I did some web design work for a person. I continued to show him progress by giving him a link to his new site on my development server. Nearing the end of completion, he dropped all contact with me and I was completely unable to get a hold of him. I took a look at his site recently, and he mixed a combination of his old site, with the new one I was creating. I thought maybe he redesigned it himself after looking at my version, however a quick look at his source code shows that the parts I recognized were full out just copied by viewing the source code on my dev server. So he completely stiffed me and I received no payment from him.
Just wondering if there's anyway to prevent that in the future?
My first thought was obfuscation, but a quick search shows that doing that to html is not recommended and not foolproof anyway.
Obviously this is a lesson learned for me to get some sort of up front payment first, but being able to prevent work from being so easily stolen in the future would be nice.
Are there any developers that have come across similar issues? How do you show someone the progress of your work without giving them plain as day access to your source?
Answer
The other answers here are just a set of hacks that can be undone.
The client side, HTML, CSS, and JS is made up of all open source technologies. While you could spend a lot of time trying to obfuscate your client side code, your best bet is just to practice better business logic.
The options open up widely on protections for server side code but your question seems to focus on client side code.
For well established trustworthy clients I am much more flexible but new clients I am super careful with. I demand progressive payments. For each deliverable there is a payment involved. That way if the relationship is ever severed both parties have what they want.
When you make yourself an easy mark for scammers you only attract scammers.