How to safely give a freelancer access to the site code?

Question

Freelance

We have a self-written online store on laravel. How can we hire a developer for minor improvements so that he doesn’t take the entire site and start selling online stores on it further

Answer 1

TDD. Give it a task in the form of a set of unit tests.
If you need to modify individual views - specify what will be at the input from the controller.
js/front is the same approach.

Answer 2

Domain - registered to you?
Everything, it is impossible to take away the site.
In extreme cases, you can destroy your self-written store. But this can be done not only by a freelancer, but also by viruses, a server crash, etc. - so you just need to have a backup copy.
PS:
Why did you decide that a person who is a successful and sought-after developer (and now there is a huge demand for them) needs to exchange his faithful piece of bread for some kind of site that still needs to be promoted, fiddling with goods, etc., etc.
Not if you hired some not successful developer who thinks - but how to cheat a client and steal his site, since your freelancer cannot earn money directly by his profession in our time when developers are in great demand.
Well, isn't it crazy.

Answer 3

At our place of work, when a third-party developer was involved for a while, they gave him access to only one microservice, which he completed, and the connections with the rest of the microservices were simply blocked.
Pros: Complete isolation of the external developer.
Cons: Need to have a microservice architecture.
PS - I generally agree with awesomer . The best way out in this situation is to look for a person with good recommendations and status on an adequate freelance exchange, whose reputation will be worth much more than stealing a store.