Have you ever gone through the process of creating a website through a web design company, only to realize that the web design company isn’t going to be a great long term fit? It’s not ideal, but it happens. Most of the time, the initial company will simply transfer your website to another hosting company, or perhaps give you the website on a thumb drive to do whatever you want to with it.
Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy. Sometimes the web design company that created the website refuses to release the website because they would much rather continue to receive a monthly ransom…er…maintenance fee for the website.
What do you do in these situations?
Your website can be recovered. There are ways to copy a website off the internet and rebuild it somewhere else. However there are a couple things to consider.
Who Owns My Website?
From a technical standpoint, we can definitely recover a website. From a legal standpoint, you may have to make sure that the other company doesn’t own the website. The website SHOULD be yours, after all you paid for it. And it’s a representation of YOUR business. But just as a fair warning…we’re not lawyers.
What about the database?
If your website has a database, it may not be recoverable. Typically, we can only recover the face of the website, not the backend. So the graphics, pictures, and files that you can see on the website can be saved. But probably not whatever administrative software was controlling the old website.
Can I Keep My Same domain name?
Possibly. It is difficult to convince the registrar on record to release a domain name to you unless you’re the account owner. Even as the legal owner of the business, the domain name belongs to whoever paid for it.
What Can I do if I can’t get the domain name?
What we can do is purchase a new domain name and wait for the first one to expire and hopefully purchase it again. If we can’t repurchase it, we can just use the new domain permanently. Your website will drop in the searching engines temporarily, but it should come right back up again where it was before. Probably higher this time, since your website will be updated more regularly.
