When it all stops working it's too late to ask: 'Who owns my web site?'

Increasing numbers of companies are finding they have lost control of their web sites and any recovery information is locked into a web company that may no longer be in business. SiteRescue can get back that control.

When web site responses stop coming in. Or a customer reports your web site is broken. Or you need urgently to change an important detail on your site but can not get any response from your web company. That is when it suddenly dawns on too many business people that they have no idea who controls their web site or domains. A growing demand for site recovery services, such as Accentika Internet's SiteRescue, suggests that with the continuing tightness in the economy, more web companies are simply dropping out of site, taking web site details with them and leaving customers high and dry. 

"We've been hearing a lot more about broken web sites over the past few weeks," says Accentika Internet Director Jonathan Campbell.

"Web site owners are finding out that they don't have any paperwork on where their site is hosted or how to get access to the site files, or even that they are not the owners of their own domain names."

Unfortunately, when customers come across a web site doesn't work it inevitably puts a question mark in their minds about the business itself. Web site owners are aware of this and it adds to the air of panic and stress as they try to track down long lost access details and passwords, if indeed they ever had them.

The problem is exacerbated by the way that web sites are frequently built. The web design company buys hosting for all it's clients with a specialist hosting company. So the web company is the "customer" as far as the hosting company is concerned. If the web company goes out of business then the link back to the original web site owner is broken. Even more awkward is where a web company has registered a domain in its own name rather than that of its client. On paper, the web company owns the domain. Good industry practice is now that domains should be registered in the name of the client. But some web companies still register domains in their own name as a way of exercising a hold over their clients. And domains registered a long time ago are even more likely to be registered in the name of a web company.

In the light of these  problems and increased calls on site rescue services, Accentika Internet has issued the following advice to companies to help avoid problems of this kind:

1. Check who owns your domain names
2. Ask for access details for your domain accounts (and then store these details safely)
3. Ask your web company to confirm access details to site files
4. Make a backup of your site

 

"My advice would be to ask these questions right away. It could save a lot of stress later on," says Accentika Internet's Jonathan Campbell.

Accentika Internet, with offices in Birmingham and Worcester, is a specialist in building, hosting and optimising content management system (CMS) web sites. Click for more information on SiteRescue.

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