Web Design VernonYour web designer stopped answering. How to get your site and domain back
You need to change a phone number, or the site is down, and your emails and texts to the person who built it go nowhere. It feels like you're locked out of your own business.
You're probably less stuck than it feels. Work through these in order.
1. Find out where your domain lives
Go to lookup.icann.org, type your domain and read the Registrar line and the expiry date. That's the company that holds your address.
2. Find out whose name it's in
Try "Forgot password" at the registrar with your business email.
- A reset email arrives. You hold the account. Sign in, and you control your address. Skip to step 4.
- Nothing arrives. The account was opened with the designer's email. Go to step 3.
3. Ask the registrar, not the designer
Contact the registrar's support. Tell them the domain is your business's, that the designer is no longer responding, and ask how to take over the account or have the contact email changed. Expect them to ask you to prove the business is yours: your registration, an ID, a utility bill with the business name.
If the domain is registered in your business's name, it's yours. ICANN's transfer policy says a registrar that doesn't let you generate the transfer ("authorization") code yourself must give it to the registered owner within five calendar days of asking, and it can't refuse just because there's a payment dispute.
If the domain is registered in the designer's name, it's theirs to release, and the next step matters more.
4. Move the domain into your own account
Once you can sign in, you can move it to a company you choose. Cancelling Wix or GoDaddy without losing your address has the steps. Do this even if everything works today. A domain that sits in someone else's account is a risk you don't need.
5. The site itself
The site is often the easiest part. If the pages are still online, everything on them is still there for me to read: your words, your photos, your prices. I can rebuild it, and the free first rebuild means you see the result before you pay anything. If the domain isn't yours and can't be moved, I'll tell you plainly, and we'll put the new site on an address that is.
Text me the domain and what you can see. I'll tell you where it stands.
