Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Determining who a web host is

Aug 27, 2007 10:58PM PDT

My web site is down. The web site manager does not respond to my inquiries. I do not know who the web host is. Is there any way to find out?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Follow the mony.
Aug 27, 2007 11:06PM PDT

Since you pay for the web hosting, follow the money to where it goes.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re: web host
Aug 27, 2007 11:08PM PDT

Who pays the web host? He should know whom he pays to.

To prepare for the worst:
What does the contract between you and the web site manager state about things like ownership, copyright, escrow, access to sources/ cms/database?
Just assume he's dead, in jail or on the run. How is the continuity of your site guaranteed?

To find out details on a website try a whois-site like:
http://www.who.is/
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
http://whois.domaintools.com/

Hope this helps.


Kees

- Collapse -
To add a little more....
Sep 4, 2007 12:24AM PDT

The whois information that Kees provided will spell out whose name and e-mail is associated with the domain. It should also indicate who the Registrar is. The registrar is who the DOMAIN is registered through. If you are looking to get control over just the domain, this is who you will have to deal with. If your name/business name is not associated with the domain name anywhere you will have a difficult convincing the registrar that it is your domain name. It will probably require some legal documents and some paper trail to indicate it is yours.

Additionally you will want to look at the DNS or Domain Name Servers. This will indicate where the data for your site is stored. If your webmaster was hosting on their own server and they aren't responding, good luck in getting access to the data. If the data is hosted on another host somewhere, you will probably need some legal documents to convince the host to give you access.

Good luck.

- Collapse -
Instead of assuming the worst
Sep 5, 2007 10:56AM PDT