Your web designer disappeared. They stopped answering emails, maybe because they changed jobs, closed the business or just went quiet. The site still runs, but a plugin needs updating, the contact form has stopped sending, or a renewal invoice arrived and nobody knows who it’s from.

The short answer: recover control in this order. Domain first, then hosting, then email and DNS, then the WordPress login. Only after that should anyone start fixing things on the site itself.

The order matters because each step depends on the one before. Whoever controls the domain controls where the website and the email point. Whoever controls the hosting can restore, move or delete the site. A WordPress password on its own gives you neither.

Most guides on this stop at “contact your registrar”. This one covers what is different for a .ie domain, the email problem that catches most people out, and the parts of a site that are often tied to the designer’s own accounts without anyone noticing.

Who actually owns my domain name?

As far as the registrar is concerned, whoever is listed as the registrant. That is often not you, even if you paid for it every year. Who paid, what your contract with the designer says and who uses the name can matter if it comes to a dispute, but that is a question for a solicitor. The registrar works from the registration record.

For a .ie domain, start with the WHOIS lookup on weare.ie, the registry that runs .ie. It always shows the sponsoring registrar, the company the domain is registered through. It shows the registrant’s name only if the registrant is a company or registered charity. If the domain was registered to a person, the name is hidden, so you can’t tell from WHOIS alone whether it’s in your name or your designer’s.

The registrar is the company to contact. Your designer may have been a reseller for that registrar, which means the registrar has no direct relationship with you. Be prepared to prove your connection to the business: company registration, invoices for the website, bank statements showing renewal payments.

How do I get my .ie domain away from the designer’s account?

To move a .ie domain to another registrar you need an authcode. weare.ie says it can be requested from your current registrar or from their Registration Services team, but it is only ever sent by email to the registrant and admin contact addresses on the domain. It is not given out over the phone (source).

This is where most people get stuck. If the admin contact email is the designer’s address, the authcode goes to the designer. The fix is to get the registrar to update the contact details first, using the proof above, and then request the code.

If the domain is registered to the designer personally rather than to your business, it’s a change of registrant, not just a transfer. For a change of holder after a business sale, weare.ie asks for a signed letter on headed paper from the current registrant; other cases follow its “Sell your domain” process (source). Either way, the current registrant has to take part, so talk to the registrar early about what evidence they will accept.

What happens if the renewal is missed?

This is the urgent case. A .ie domain that isn’t renewed is suspended on day 45 after the renewal date, which takes the website and email offline. It can still be renewed during the suspension. On day 75 it enters Pending Delete and can no longer be renewed, and a few days later anyone can register it (source).

So if you’ve had a renewal notice and don’t know who sent it, pay it or find out who did before anything else on this page. A .com follows different rules and timings, set by the registrar.

How do I find out where my website is hosted?

Look at who you pay. Search your email and bank statements for “hosting”, “cPanel”, “Plesk”, “renewal” and the domain name. If you pay a hosting company directly, the account is probably yours and their support can reset the login once you prove who you are.

If you paid the designer a yearly fee that included hosting, the site most likely sits inside the designer’s own hosting account, next to their other clients. The hosting company won’t hand you access to someone else’s account. In that case you need a copy of the site, files and database, so it can be moved to hosting in your own name.

If the designer is reachable but slow, ask for exactly this: a full backup of files and database, and the login details for anything registered in your name. If they’re not reachable at all and the site sits in their account, it can be rebuilt from what is publicly visible, but treat that as a last resort.

Why could my email stop working when I change things?

Because the email depends on DNS records, and those often sit somewhere nobody thinks about.

Your domain points to a set of nameservers. Those hold the records that send website visitors to the hosting and email to your mailbox (the MX records). Designers often move the nameservers to their own hosting or to a free DNS service under their own login. If you then move the website or change nameservers without copying every record across, the website may come back fine and the email quietly stops arriving.

Before anyone changes anything, write down where the nameservers point and copy all existing DNS records, including MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If your email runs on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, check who is the admin on that account too. It’s not unusual for that to be the designer as well.

How do I get back into WordPress without the password?

Try “Lost your password?” on the login page first. The reset link goes to the email address on the admin user. If that’s the designer’s address, it won’t help you.

With access to the hosting account there are cleaner ways in. Many hosting panels have a WordPress tool that resets the admin password or creates a new admin user. Without that, a new admin can be added through the database with phpMyAdmin, or with WP-CLI if the host offers SSH. Do this only on a site and hosting account that belong to your business, or with written permission from the owner. A mistake in the database can take the site down, so take a backup first.

Once you’re in, take a full backup before you touch anything else. Then secure access in this order: give your own admin account a strong new password and two-factor login, check under Users who else has administrator rights, and change the passwords on accounts you can’t account for. Delete old designer or test accounts only once you know nothing depends on them. When WordPress deletes a user, it asks what to do with their posts and pages, so assign them to your own account.

What else might still be in the designer’s name?

The parts nobody lists on an invoice. These are the ones I check:

Premium plugin and theme licences. Page builders, form plugins and premium themes are often activated with the designer’s licence key. Depending on the licence, updates and support may no longer be available once it lapses, even if the site keeps working. An outdated plugin is a common way into a WordPress site.
Off-site backups. Backup plugins often send copies to the designer’s own cloud storage. If the account is gone, so are the backups, and you may have none.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics. If you’re not listed as an owner, you can’t see how the site performs in search. You can verify yourself as a new owner once you control the domain or the site.
Google Business Profile. Check who the owner and managers are. This one matters more than the website for many local businesses.
Contact form entries and customer data. If the designer still has an admin login, they still have access to whatever the site stores, such as enquiries or WooCommerce orders. That is your data and your responsibility.

The handover checklist lists what you should have received at launch. If you’re reading this one, it’s worth going through that list now.

What should I send if the designer still answers emails?

Keep it short and specific. A designer who is busy with other work will often hand things over without fuss when the request is clear and polite. Something like this:

Hi [designer’s name], we’re moving support for our website to someone else and want to make sure we have everything in our own name. Could you send us: the login for the domain registrar and hosting accounts, or a full backup of the site (files and database) if it’s hosted in your account; the WordPress admin login; and a list of any premium plugins, themes or services that are licensed through you. Thanks for the work on the site.

Ask for it in writing, by email, so you have a record of what was handed over and when.

What does a new person check first on a site they take over?

When I take over a WordPress site, I don’t start by changing anything. I first check:

That a working backup exists, and that I made it myself.
Whether WordPress, the theme and plugins are up to date, and which ones have been abandoned by their developers.
Which PHP version the server runs. Old sites often sit on a version that no longer gets security fixes.
The server error log. A site can look fine and still throw errors in the background, as I describe in what the error log showed on our own site.
Whether the contact form actually delivers. This is one of the most common silent failures, covered in WordPress contact form not sending emails.

Only after that does it make sense to talk about fixes, redesigns or moving the site.

Do I need a one-off fix or ongoing support?

If the site is in reasonable shape and you’ve got all the logins back, a single round of checks and updates by whoever takes over may be all it needs. If you have no idea when anything was last updated, or the site matters for enquiries or sales, ongoing maintenance is the safer choice. The same situation will come back otherwise, only with a different person missing.

If the site is completely down right now, start with what to do when your business website goes down.

Need someone to take over your WordPress site?

I take over existing WordPress websites for small businesses in Ireland, including sites hosted elsewhere. What that involves and what it costs is on the WordPress website maintenance page.

If something is broken right now, contact me directly and tell me what you still have access to.

Sources

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