Who holds the keys to your website

Most people find out who controls their website at the worst possible moment: when the person who built it stops answering, or when they try to change their opening hours and discover they cannot.

The fix is unglamorous and takes about half an hour, whether your site is finished, half-built or still an idea.

The account is the website

A website lives inside an account: a hosting plan, a site builder, a content system, whatever the company calls it. Whoever's email address opens that account holds the site. That is the whole test.

Answer one question today. If you asked for a password reset on your website right now, which inbox would the message land in? If it is an address you cannot open, you do not control the site, even though you paid for it.

Five things you should be able to do without asking anyone

Go through this list with your site open.

1. Log in and reset the password using your own email address, not someone else's.
2. Change a line of text yourself. Pick something real and small, like a price or the hours on a bank holiday, and change it. Ten minutes is the target; anything slower and you will stop making small changes at all.
3. Get your words and pictures out. There should be a way to copy your text into a plain document and download your photos at a size you can reuse, without asking a person.
4. Find your domain. Know which company it is registered with, be able to log in there, and know which email address gets the renewal warning. Picking the name in the first place is a different job; this is only about holding it.
5. See where enquiries arrive. Which inbox, which spreadsheet, which tool? And who pays for anything running alongside the site, such as a booking diary, a mailing list or a payment button?

Anything on that list you cannot do is the work to do. It is usually two emails and a password reset.

What to ask for before you pay anyone

If someone else is building your site, four lines belong in your first email, and in the agreement if there is one:

• The site will live on an account in my name, set up with my email address, and I will be given the login when the work is done.
• The domain will be registered to me, and the renewal notice will come to me.
• I can export my text and my photographs and use them again somewhere else.
• If we stop working together, the site keeps running until I replace it.

That last line is the expensive one: a site that vanishes the day a working relationship ends takes your enquiries with it.

A builder who will not put those four lines in writing has told you something worth knowing. Ask about photos in the same conversation: the pictures you took on your phone are yours, so ask for the originals, not the versions on the page. Taking them well is a separate skill; keeping them takes one sentence.

If you are already locked out

Order matters.

• Send one calm email listing exactly what you need: the login, access to the domain, a copy of your content. Short and specific is easier to answer.
• Leave the old site up while you sort out a replacement. A live site with stale prices beats a blank page.
• On the domain: registrars follow ICANN's transfer policy, which sets out how a domain holder moves a name from one accredited registrar to another. In practice the process runs on email, so it depends on whoever controls the address in the registration record. Ask them to change that contact to you, or to approve the transfer request when it arrives.
• On the content: copy your pages into a document and download the pictures one by one if you must. Retyping six pages is an afternoon; the same job after six years of posts and menus is a project.

If the web address changes, tell Google

Moving is not only a matter of the new site existing. Google asks for a change of address in Search Console, for permanent redirects kept in place for at least a year, and for patience while the results settle over the next few weeks. Its guide to site moves is written for developers, but the first two instructions are things you can check.

Half an hour, written down

Open a note on your phone and write four facts into it:

• The email address that opens your website account.
• The company your domain is registered with, and the date it renews.
• How you would get your text and photos out.
• Who to ask if you cannot.

Check it again whenever someone new touches the site: a rebuild, a new helper or new tools can quietly move the keys back out of your hand.

Sitewright is still being built, so there is nothing to sign up for today. The waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open, and it is where you will hear when there is something to try. If that sounds useful, you can join the waitlist.