How to get access codes

pilgrim · 2nd April 2008

Hi,
I have a client who has a real estate website hosted by the web designer on his VSP in the UK. The client wants me to take over the maintenance of the site as the web designer has gone missing, they have not been able to contact him for over a month and beleive he has left the country.
The client has no access to his site and database of properties, does not know any passwords etc.
We found the hosting company but they are being very unhelpfull.
Does anyone have any ideas how we can get access to the site?

burble · 2nd April 2008

Best bet is the hosting company, that's the easiest and fastest way. If they still won't help, you could try taking the domain by force and starting the site again. Is the domain registered in the client's name or the web designers?

If it's in the clients name then that should be ok. If not, a .uk should be straight-forward enough to take over through nominet, otherwise you might have problems.

Sash! · 2nd April 2008

Just keep at it; sooner or later things will get sorted hopefully. If you keep on at them enough, I am sure they will eventually want to assist you.

In what way are the hosting company being unhelpful? Are they just generally being unhelpful, or is there a reason such as client privacy etc for them to seem unhelpful?

I have had been in a few situation's where a web designer etc has not paid for their account and client their site's have gone down etc, and you have to be really vigilant as a host to ensure the person claiming to "own" the site is who they say they are.

Good luck!

JamesSykes · 2nd April 2008

It's a difficult one because the host should only really be dealing with the account holder. The minute the host gets involved with customers of their customers there is a big problem.

How would you feel if your supplier got involved in your business? It's hard to tell just because you cant get a hold of someone whether or not they are dead/missing/on holiday/just cant be arsed.

burble · 2nd April 2008

There is that. It might also be stored in a shared account with the designer's other clients, in which case you couldn't expect access.

Best chance is trying to transfer the domain.

adamsmith · 2nd April 2008

This is a story I hear all too frequently - web designers going AWOL and leaving the client high and dry

.

If the hosting account is registered in your web designer's name then it's reasonable/expected that the hosting company won't hand over any logins.

Transferring the domain would be my suggestion too (assuming that is registered in yoru name!) however I'm assuming you need the files/databases from the hosting account?

Cranky · 2nd April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sash!

Just keep at it; sooner or later things will get sorted hopefully. If you keep on at them enough, I am sure they will eventually want to assist you.

If that's how you handle these situations then you are irresponsible. You have a responsibility to your direct clients, and regardless of what they have done you cannot be legally expected to give access to your direct customer webspace to a third-party whatever the scenario, without their explicit consent.

Cranky · 2nd April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilgrim

Hi,
I have a client who has a real estate website hosted by the web designer on his VSP in the UK. The client wants me to take over the maintenance of the site as the web designer has gone missing, they have not been able to contact him for over a month and beleive he has left the country.
The client has no access to his site and database of properties, does not know any passwords etc.
We found the hosting company but they are being very unhelpfull.
Does anyone have any ideas how we can get access to the site?

You would be better trying to recover the domain name, and any content from the site that you can find, and setup with a new webhost.

If the domain is a .uk domain (as mentioned above) and registered to your client, the migration process is easy as Nominet will assist with this. If it's not a .uk domain let us know the type and we can try to advise but it's much more difficult typically.

pilgrim · 2nd April 2008

Thanks Guys,
The domain is registered to the client.
Its a .eu.com
So it may have to be a rebuild of the site.

I was thinking that maybe if the client set up a new hosting package with the same host they could transfer his site to this but the hosting company doesn't even want to talk to the client.
After days waiting for a reply to his ticket he phoned a few times explained the situation but got these emails.

You will not be receiving any support from our company. You need to go
to ****** direct as we are not the registrar for this domain.
Please do not call again.

Hello,

We are not the registrar for this domain. Please do your research properly in
future as we have a very busy workload and opening tickets on our system
without good reason is equal to abuse.

Closing this ticket.

Rgds,

Senior Administration Team

Cranky · 2nd April 2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by pilgrim

Thanks Guys,
The domain is registered to the client.
Its a .eu.com
So it may have to be a rebuild of the site.

I was thinking that maybe if the client set up a new hosting package with the same host they could transfer his site to this but the hosting company doesn't even want to talk to the client.
After days waiting for a reply to his ticket he phoned a few times explained the situation but got these emails.

You will not be receiving any support from our company. You need to go
to ****** direct as we are not the registrar for this domain.
Please do not call again.

Hello,

We are not the registrar for this domain. Please do your research properly in
future as we have a very busy workload and opening tickets on our system
without good reason is equal to abuse.

Closing this ticket.

Rgds,

Senior Administration Team

If they are not the registrar you're asking the wrong company. Maybe they're hosting the website, but another company is registrar for the domain name. If it takes them days to reply to tickets they don't sound like a great host anyway.

It's not as simple as copying data from the current account to yours. Legally to the host, they are not your files, whichever way you look at it. If they provide them to you, they have breached their responsibility to their direct client (the missing designer).

If you PM or post the domain here we can check the registrar for you.

burble · 2nd April 2008

If it's an eu.com, methinks you need to contact CentralNic. eu.com is nasty, you actually have a subdomain there.

As an aside, I wish I'd thought of that business model. Buy a domain and then sell subdomains? ~~At the same price as a domain?~~ bugger me they're expensive. Printing money.

othellotech · 2nd April 2008

centralNIC for the .eu.com (and other subdomains they "rent" out) are a responsible company, if the domain is in the end-clients actual name, then getting it move to another CNIC accreditted reseller is a few emails and fax away from being done.

As regards the site, iit (partly) depends on the contract the client had with the designer, as to who *owns* the files/layout/design/copyright etc, and sadly it's often a case that it really is simpler to get a new one (with teh right licence terms 2nd time around)

[inx]Olly · 2nd April 2008

Don't go asking a company access to an account that isn't in your name.

It's a waste of theirs and your time.

We must have this asked at least half a dozen times a day...as we have a page we redirect them to