This is a long story so will try to keep as short as possible, and thanks in advance for reading.

It’s about my website I have for my business

It was designed and hosted by a guy a few miles from me who worked from home, was always there for advice but, about 18 months – 2 years ago, I got a E Mail advising me that the website will be taken over by another firm.

No problem so, ranking well on Google, I only contacted them when they sent me the bills for hosting etc and these were paid by PayPal.

I wanted to get another website about 10 months ago and E Mailed them for a quote, at the time on their website, they didn’t have a phone number which I thought was strange. Anyway I never heard back off them.

Last week I changed broadband providers so tried to contact them regarding changing the E Mail address in my website but, again, no reply. Obviously these days the E Mails and contact pages on the website are vital.

Getting worried, I managed to find the original guy had logged into the ” back end ” of my website in June, bit strange when it had been passed over to the new firm, so I found him on Twitter and DMd him with what I wanted to have done regarding the E Mail address changes and he did it for me but never contacted me to confirm it, I just know with the E Mails coming through.

I was in Manchester a couple of Days ago which is were the offices of the new firm are so I went to find them, after wandering round for ages, I established the ” offices ” are in reality a corner shop that sells Mailbox addresses. I took down the details of this company, rang them and they said ” who are you, I can’t tell you anything unless you are from trading standards”

So basically I’ve no idea who is in control of my website, the website names, of which I have 3 linked to one website, are registered to my home address which is at least one good thing.

Any ideas of advice ? I’m just worried about not knowing who these people are, they have no contact phone numbers and the original guy doesn’t live at the house he used to before and must have closed his business down.

Could I get someone else to design another website and get rid of this one as the domains are registered to me ?

Thanks a lot

You can point your domains wherever you like.

Who are the domains registered with? If you have control of the domains it’s simple, if you don’t it gets more complicated as you need to get them to release them.

Get another web designer and give them the logon to your domain so they can redirect the dns, it’s a 5 min job. They will be quite pleased the spec for a new one is so clear if you just show them your old site. The password for the backend maymake their life a lot easier too.

Who are the domains registered with? If you have control of the domains it’s simple, if you don’t it gets more complicated as you need to get them to release them.

Registered with http://www.heartinternet.co.uk

Simple with heartinternet – message them, their customer service is great.

http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/domain-names – Full DNS Management – sounds like you’ll be OK. You need a new hosting account / website first though.

Is the domain registered by you ?
If so you just need to host on another server and do a redirect.

If not you need to write a real letter to the people who run the Internet – I can’t remember the name but I had a client who had the same problem. We got back ownership of the domain back and pointed to a different server.

If you need some help drop me an email.

Is the domain registered by you ?

The original guy registered them, but to my address. I’ve just checked them on 123reg, and they all have my address.

Looks like you will have no bother sorting this.
I know a good web designer if your still looking a new site – his email is in my profile 😉

If the domain is registered with yourself, that bit should be easy. Just a case of retrieving the login details for your control panel. If it is not registered with yourself then I think you need to go through the process of proving that it belongs to your company.

Retrieving the actual website would be more difficult, as it would require the co-operation of the people hosting it. And if that is a bunch of people in a corner shop that won’t speak to anyone but trading standards, then you’re a bit screwed. It might be worth trying to get in touch with the original guy though, as he might still have access to it. But as already mentioned, worst case scenario, you can build a new one.

Try Nominet:-
http://www.nominet.org.uk/uk-domain-names/about-domain-names/domain-lookup-whois/whois-tool

Type in your website address and see who the Registrar is, they are the hosters.

Your ISP will be able to host your websites for you at a small cost, I transferred mine to PlusNet when I changed to them and it cost nowt 🙂