Every few months, a version of the same email lands in my inbox. Different sender, same sinking feeling: “My developer’s gone quiet, my site’s still live, but I can’t actually get into any of it. Help.”
If that’s you right now — take a breath. It’s more common than you’d think, and it’s almost always fixable. Let me walk you through what’s actually going on, and what to do about it.
First, the good news
If you’ve got a recent backup and admin access to your WordPress dashboard, you’re in a much stronger spot than most people in this situation. The site works. You can log in. That’s a real head start.
But here’s the part that trips everyone up: getting your website back isn’t really about the website.
The real issue is who owns the keys
Think of your website like a house. There are three sets of keys, and they don’t all live in the same pocket:
- The domain name — your address. The deed. yourbusiness.com.
- The hosting — the land the house sits on. Where the files actually live.
- The DNS — the signpost that tells the world your address points to that particular plot of land.
A developer who’s gone dark usually isn’t holding your site hostage on purpose. More often, everything’s just registered under their accounts — and now you can’t get in. Migrating the files is the easy part. The domain is the sticky one.
Why the domain matters most
Without access to your domain registration, you’ve really got two options: wait for your old developer to transfer ownership, or register a fresh domain and start pointing people to it.
Neither is fun. But once you do have domain access — old or new — the rest moves fast. A small site, the kind I usually see in these emails, can be migrated in a few hours.
Here’s what I’d actually recommend
This is the setup I suggest to clients, whether they end up working with me or not:
- Register your domain yourself. Somewhere like GoDaddy is fine as a registrar — the point is that the deed sits in an account you control, under your name and your card.
- Let your web partner run your DNS through Cloudflare. This is the signpost layer, and honestly, most people have no interest in poking around in it — nor should they. It’s perfectly fine to let someone you trust manage DNS on your behalf for better security and performance. The key is that you still own the domain it points to. Own the deed; let someone handle the wiring.
- Get on proper managed hosting. Once the domain’s sorted, where your site actually lives matters just as much. Good managed hosting means hosting, security, and updates are handled for you — so you’re never the one fielding a “the site’s down” call at 9pm. That’s exactly what a care plan is for.
One thing I’d steer you away from: using GoDaddy for hosting. Fine for buying a domain — but they’ve had enough security and performance hiccups over the years that I don’t point clients there for where the site actually lives.
The takeaway
If you’re locked out today, the move is simple, even if it isn’t instant: get control of your domain first. Everything else follows from there.
And if you’d rather not untangle it on your own — that’s literally the thing I do. My care plans start at $125/month and cover hosting, security, and updates, so the “wait, who owns what?” panic never happens to you again.
Locked out and not sure where your keys are? Book a quick chat and I’ll help you map it out.
