If your normal Web host was in an area that was badly affected (or maybe you hosted yourself), you may need to move your Web site to a host in a more stable area. While this is normally relatively straightforward, it becomes difficult if the details about your site are locked in the head of someone who is unavailable to you. If you're in that situation, this chapter will help.
There are typically three (plus one) components to a Web site, all or any of which may have been affected:
Domain registration: The name of your site (e.g. www.mywebsite.org) - which is separate form the actual Web site content that is hosted by a Web host. This domain name can be registered separately, but is often done for you by a Web hosting company, which is why most people do not think of them separately.
Web host: The company providing the disk space for your Web site. This may have even been your own organization, but even in those cases, you may want to move your Web hosting to another service (since your hands may be full right now).
Web site content: You may have backups of your Web site. If not, you may just want to get a simple page up with contact information and a status update for your supporters.
E-mail hosting: Your e-mail may also be provided by an outside company, either the same as your Web host, your Internet Service Provider (ISP), a different company, or you may have hosted in-house.
We've provided guidance below on what to if your Web site is down; you need to move your email to another host; or your Web site is OK, but all of your access records and passwords are gone.
For all of these situations, you will need to get as much information as you can about your current host and domain registration. If you do not have your own record, tools on this site can help you find this information:
Enter your domain name in the WHOIS lookup box (left column, first blue box).
The resulting WHOIS information page will tell you-
- The registrar ("Sponsoring Registrar")
- The contact person for the domain (under "Admin contact")
- The name server, which will inform you of the current Web host.
See below for more on how to decipher this information.
Note: If the domain registrar is Network Solutions, you have to go to Network Solution's Web site to do this information lookup: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois
Web site is down
If your Web hosting company is down and you need to get some sort of presence on the Web as soon as you can.
Choose a new Web host
You likely do not need to re-register your domain name (see below), but you will need to pay for a new Web hosting service. Dotser.com has a good small-business Web hosting service for $15 / month and it supports both Linux and Windows platforms. Being able to pick the right platform is important if:
a) you have backups of your site, which may have been built on a specific platform;
b) if you are hoping that your original Web host will return and you want to maintain the same platform in case you switch back. If your Web site included a database on the Web host's servers, the availability of the correct database platform (for instance MySQL, or MS SQL Server) is also important.
Domain registration
Once you have paid for a Web hosting service, you have to update the information at your domain registrar to "point" the address of your domain to the new Web host (as opposed to the old one). Usually this is as easy as logging in to your domain registrar's control panel and updating the information yourself. Depending on the registrar, you may need to contact your Web host directly and ask them to do it and you'll have to prove who you are (otherwise anyone could "hijack" a Web site). The same goes if your domain was previously registered by a company that is no longer online and you need to transfer your domain name to a registrar that is still operational, again you will have to prove who you are.
In the best scenario, the person (or entity) listed as the admin contact in the WHOIS information you looked up on DNSstuff.com would match the current contact information. If the contact listed is an individual, you can usually make requests via the e-mail address listed as the admin e-mail contact in the WHOIS lookup. However, if that information is wrong, old, or "masked" in the WHOIS lookup, you can sometimes prove who you are with a fax of an ID, or by answering a "secret question" that was established when you registered the domain. However, if the admin contact listed is an organization's name, proving who you are usually requires a written letter on your organization's letterhead, which may not be an easy thing to do at this stage.
While some registrars may be flexible around these issues, given the circumstances, this is also a ripe time for fraud, so it is likely you will be required to very clearly prove who you are if you need to transfer domains. On the registrar's Web site, they usually have information about how to contact them for changes if you have lost your password or your admin contact information is out of date.
Load the Web site
Once you have the Web host and domain registrar pointing to the right address, you can begin uploading your Web pages, either simple contact pages if you have no backups or the original Web site if you do have backups.
E-mail hosting
If your Web hosting company was also hosting your e-mail, you will want to use your new Web host to also provide your e-mail hosting. This may require you to pay for extra e-mail hosting services, or it may be included (up to a certain number of e-mail addresses). However, you will need to update what is called your MX record, which is similar to updating your Web site domain address. Typically, your e-mail host will give you information about what your MX record should be (usually it's an address, like mail.mydomain.com, or an IP address). You have to either enter this information on your domain registration control panel, or ask your domain registrar to update that information for you (again, by proving who you are).
No records
If you can access your Web site, but do not have any of your access records or passwords, you are going to need to contact the domain registrar (or Web host) and, after convincing them of who you are, ask them to change your login and password information. Thankfully, most of the basic footwork you'll need to do to find domain registration information is provided in the WHOIS lookup on DNSstuff.com listed above.
On the WHOIS information page: The "Sponsoring Registrar" is your domain registrar.
You can also see who registered your domain for you to determine if it was done by an individual at your organization (in which case, that person may have the login and password information), or if it was done by your Web hosting company. If the latter is the case, your domain registration may still be fine, but you do not have direct access to the domain control panel, and so you'll need to request the IP address and MX record updates, as opposed to doing them yourself.
The key to proving who you are, the admin contact listed in the WHOIS record is usually listed after the "registrant" information. Sometimes the e-mail address is masked, making it harder for you to find out what e-mail address to use to contact the registrar. Hopefully, the street address is correct (and matches your letterhead), making it easier to send it written requests.
If you have no idea who your current Web host is, you can try to look at the bottom of the WHOIS page, for "Name Server". Sometimes it is obvious (dns.webhostcompany.com), and sometimes it's just an IP address. You can use DNSstuff.com to do a "reverse lookup" of an IP address to find the Web site name for that company. Note that this will not always reveal who the Web host is.
If your organization was hosting its Web site in-house, the WHOIS results can be very confusing, so try to clear that up before getting lost in recursive searches.