Website Rescue & Recovery
Website rescue and recovery
For websites abandoned by a previous developer, platforms you are unable to edit, and domain or hosting accounts to which access has been lost.
Overview
Establishing what you hold, and restoring control of it
The circumstances vary. A developer has ceased responding. An error is visible on the home page and there is no route to correct it. An invoice arrives for a service that cannot be identified. A site goes offline and the only person who understood the arrangement left some years ago. The common factor is uncertainty over what the business actually owns.
In the great majority of cases, it owns everything material. Domains are registered to an owner and hosting accounts are billed to an account holder, and there is an established process for verifying that this is you and restoring control, including where the original developer is unavailable. That constitutes the bulk of this work: determining precisely what exists, transferring it into your name, and then advising whether repair or replacement is the sounder course.
What’s included
Scope of a recovery engagement
Transfer from a previous developer
Their cooperation is not required, and you will not be asked to pursue them.
Domain recovery
Registrars operate a documented ownership-verification process. It is an administrative matter rather than a technical one, and it is generally resolvable.
Hosting recovery
Determining where the site is actually hosted, which is frequently not where the business was told, and transferring the account into your name.
Platform migration
Content and structure are carried across, and existing page addresses are preserved so that established search visibility is not lost in the move.
Fault repair
Typically an expired certificate, an unsupported plugin, exhausted disk space or a discontinued template. Rarely as serious as it first appears.
Written assessment
A documented account of the site’s condition and the work required, provided before any commitment beyond the initial stage.
Scope and timing
A fixed-scope initial assessment
The first stage is deliberately contained and fixed in scope: we establish what exists, restore your control of it, and document what remediation would involve. It is quoted as a fixed figure before it begins, so that a website fault does not commit the business to open-ended expenditure.
Where a site is currently offline, note that in the subject line of your email. Those inquiries are prioritized.
Frequently asked questions
Common inquiries
Our developer is no longer responding. Can you take over?
Yes. This is the most frequent reason clients approach us. Their cooperation is not required. What is required is access to your domain registrar and hosting account, and where that has been lost, recovering it is part of the engagement.
We do not know who controls our domain. Can it be recovered?
In most cases, yes. Domains are registered to an owner, and registrars operate a documented process for verifying ownership and restoring control, including where the original registrant is unavailable. It is an administrative process rather than a technical one.
Does the site have to be rebuilt from scratch?
Frequently not. A site that appears beyond repair is often a hosting fault, an unsupported plugin or an abandoned template, and correcting that costs a fraction of a rebuild. Where a rebuild genuinely is the more economical route, we will set out why.
Can you migrate us off our current platform?
Yes. Content and structure are carried across, and existing page addresses are preserved so that established search visibility is not lost in the move.