What actually happens when your web person disappears

It's the most common story we hear. Years ago, a nephew, a neighbor, or a freelancer built the website. It looked great. Then they got a full-time job, moved across the country, or simply stopped answering emails. Now nobody knows how to change anything.

The usual symptoms

• The site still shows a phone number you stopped using.
• There's a "Spring Special" that expired two springs ago.
• You've been paying a hosting bill to a company you've never heard of.
• The domain name is registered under someone else's email address.

First: find out who controls the domain

The domain name — yourbusiness.com — is the single most important thing to get back. Whoever controls it controls where your website and, often, your email point.

Look for renewal emails from companies like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, or Network Solutions. If the domain is registered to your former web person, ask them politely to transfer it to an account in your name. Most people are happy to help once asked. If they can't be reached, registrars have a formal process for proving ownership, and it's worth starting sooner rather than later.

Second: don't panic about the site itself

You don't need the old login to save your website. The public pages your customers see are exactly what we copy when we move a site in. As long as the site is online, we can bring it over as it is — pages, photos, and all.

Third: stop paying for things you don't use

Once your site is safely moved and your domain points to its new home, you can cancel the old hosting plan. We'll help you figure out what's safe to shut off — the important thing is never to cancel anything that your email depends on until it's been moved too.

The lesson

The fix isn't finding a more reliable freelancer. It's putting your website with a team — one that keeps records, answers messages, and doesn't vanish when life happens. That's the job we signed up for.