Your web developer disappeared. Here is how to take your website back

It happens more than anyone admits. The person who built your website stops answering. Maybe they changed careers, moved away or simply got busy. Now the site needs a change, or something has broken, and you realize you do not know how to get in.

The good news is that almost every part of a website can be recovered by the business that owns it. It takes some patience and the right order. Here is that order.

First, find out what you are dealing with

A website is not one thing. It is a few separate accounts that work together, and each one can be held by a different person:

• The domain registration. Your web address, rented yearly from a registrar such as GoDaddy, Namecheap or a Canadian registrar. Whoever controls this controls everything else.
• The DNS settings. The instructions that point your address at your website and your email. Usually managed at the registrar or the host.
• The hosting. The service the site actually runs on.
• The site's admin login. Where the content is edited, for example a WordPress dashboard or a builder account.
• Your email. If your addresses use your domain, they depend on the domain and DNS too.
• The Google accounts. Your Business Profile, Search Console and Analytics.

Make a simple list with three columns: the account, who holds it, and whether you can log in. That list is your recovery plan.

Recover the domain first

Look up your domain with a public WHOIS or registration lookup to find which registrar holds it. Then check whose name is on it. If your business is the registrant, the registrar will help you regain access to the account after you prove who you are.

If the developer registered it in their own name, it is still recoverable, but it takes more paperwork. Contact the registrar, explain the situation, and send proof that the domain belongs to your business: invoices for the website, business registration, and records of using the domain. Keep it calm and factual. Registrars deal with this regularly.

Then the hosting and the site

If the hosting account is in your business's name, the host can reset access for you. If it is in the developer's name and you cannot reach them, ask the host what they need to release the account or a copy of the site. Hosts will rarely hand over someone else's account, but a backup of your own site is often possible.

For the site's admin login, a password reset usually works if the account email is one you control. If it is the developer's email, whoever has hosting access can usually create a new admin account for you.

If you cannot recover the hosting at all, all is not lost. The words and images on your public pages can still be saved, and the site can be rebuilt somewhere you control.

Reclaim your Google accounts

Business Profile. If someone else manages your profile, Google lets you request ownership from the profile itself. If they do not respond, Google offers next steps.

Search Console. Once you control your DNS or your site, you can verify yourself as an owner. No permission from the old developer needed.

Analytics. If you cannot get into the old account, set up a new one and add it to the site. You lose the old history but not the future.

Lock it down so it never happens again

• Every account in your business's name, using an email address you control, such as one on your own domain.
• Two step verification on the registrar, the host, the site and your email.
• Passwords in a password manager that more than one trusted person can reach.
• Your developer added as a user on your accounts, not as the owner of them.
• A one page document listing every account, where it lives and when it renews.

Your developer should have a key to the building, not the deed to it.

Fix it or start again?

Once you are back in, look at the site honestly.

Fix it if it still does its job and the problems are specific: a broken form, an error message, outdated software, a security warning. That is what our one time Fix & Secure service is for. It starts at $349, and we tell you exactly what we changed. Bigger problems are quoted in writing before any work starts.

Start again if the site was already holding the business back, is built on software nobody supports anymore, or would cost more to repair than to replace. Then the recovery is still worth doing, because you keep your domain, your email and your Google history.