It’s one of the most common stories we hear. A freelancer or small agency built your website a few years ago. They were helpful at first. Then replies got slower, then stopped. Now you need to change something, or something has broken, and nobody in your business knows how to log in, where the site is hosted or who owns the domain.
If that’s you, take a breath. This is fixable, and you’re far from alone. Here’s a calm, step-by-step plan to take back control.
Step 1: Work out what you already have
Before contacting anyone, gather whatever information exists. Look through old emails, invoices and receipts for:
- Your domain registrar, the company where your web address (like yourbusiness.ca) is registered.
- Your hosting provider, the company whose servers run your site.
- Any login details the developer sent: WordPress admin, hosting, email or domain accounts.
- Invoices or agreements that mention ownership, licences or what was included.
Often the domain and hosting renewal emails are going to someone’s inbox in your business already. Those emails tell you a lot.
Step 2: Secure your domain first
Your domain is the most important asset. If you lose control of it, you lose your website address and possibly your email.
Check who the domain is registered to. A lookup tool from your registrar or a public WHOIS search may show limited information, but the renewal emails are usually the clearest clue. If the domain is in the developer’s account rather than yours, ask for it to be transferred to an account in your business’s name. If you can’t reach them, most registrars have a formal process for proving ownership.
Make sure the domain is set to auto-renew and that the renewal notices go to an address someone in your business monitors.
Step 3: Get access to your hosting
Next, find out where the site lives. If you have hosting invoices, contact that company directly. As the account holder or business owner, you can usually regain access by proving your identity.
If the hosting is under the developer’s account, you have two options: ask them to transfer it, or move the site to a new hosting account you own. A move is often the cleaner long-term choice anyway.
Step 4: Regain access to WordPress
Once you control the hosting, you can always get back into WordPress, even without the old password. A developer can reset an administrator password through the hosting account or database, or create a new administrator account.
When you’re in, review the list of users. Remove accounts you don’t recognize, remove the departed developer’s access (or downgrade it if you’re still on good terms) and make sure every remaining administrator uses a strong, unique password with two-factor authentication.
Step 5: Take stock of the site’s health
Sites left alone for a while usually need attention. A health check should cover:
- Updates. How far behind are WordPress, the theme and the plugins?
- Licences. Are premium plugins or themes registered to the old developer? You may need your own licences to keep getting updates.
- Backups. Do any exist? Where? When was the last one?
- Security. Any signs of compromise, suspicious files or unknown accounts?
- Speed and forms. Does the site load quickly, and do contact forms actually deliver?
Make a full backup before changing anything.
Step 6: Write it all down
This is the step that prevents it happening again. Create a simple, secure record of:
- Where the domain is registered and who has access.
- Where the site is hosted and who has access.
- WordPress administrator accounts.
- Premium plugin and theme licences and their renewal dates.
- Who to call for help.
Store the login details in a password manager the business controls, not in one person’s head or one person’s inbox.
Step 7: Decide who looks after it now
Finally, decide what happens next. You don’t necessarily need the same arrangement as before. The questions that matter are:
- Who applies updates and checks nothing broke?
- Who’s watching for security problems and outages?
- Who do you call when something goes wrong, and how quickly will they respond?
The reason the old arrangement failed is usually that it depended on one person’s goodwill. A clear agreement with a business, rather than a favour from an individual, is far more dependable.
Signs your site has been left alone too long
Even if you haven’t lost contact with your developer, these are signs your site may effectively be unmanaged:
- The WordPress dashboard shows many pending updates.
- You’ve received hosting or domain renewal notices nobody acted on.
- Contact form messages seem to have dried up, and nobody has checked whether the form still works.
- The copyright year in your footer is several years old.
- Nobody can say when the site was last backed up.
Any one of these is worth a closer look.
A word about blame
It’s tempting to be angry with the developer who vanished. Sometimes it’s neglect, but often it’s life: people change careers, get overloaded or close their business. Approaching them politely tends to get faster results than a stern email, and many will happily hand things over when asked.
The takeaway
Losing touch with your web developer is stressful, but recoverable. Secure the domain, regain hosting and WordPress access, check the site’s health, document everything and put a dependable arrangement in place.
If you’re stuck partway through, or you don’t know where to begin, get in touch. Helping businesses take back control of orphaned WordPress sites is a big part of what we do, and we treat urgent cases urgently.