I was told by a visitor that her website's domain name was bought by a friend, who retained control of it. She only had access to the site at the web host level (for example, she had the password necessary to update the website, including access to the web hosting account's control panel). "I worked on this site for years, building content," she wrote. "Now that the traffic is growing, the guy suddenly feels entitled." After reading my article on How to Rescue Your Website from the Clutches of a Bad Web Designer or Bad Web Host, she realised that she had better do something now, before it is too late.
Although the above seems to describe a very specific problem, this article also applies to a wider class of situations that many people (including me, when I first started) face, namely, what should you do if you start your website on a URL (ie, web address) that you don't own, and later want control of that address? This happened to me because I created my first site on a free web host, and used the free URL that was provided by that host. Obviously, I did not own my URL either. It will also apply to you if your website is on one of the many free blog hosts around, using an address they provided.
Note that this article assumes that although you do not own the domain, you still have control of your website. That is, you can update and change the site any time you want, and it still runs normally. You are merely reading this because you are either trying to preempt the situation where a web designer shuts down your access to the site in the future or the more common one of a free web host closing unexpectedly, taking your site with it.
As far as I know, there are two ways to deal with this.
If the person who owns the domain is a friend, one way is to negotiate to buy it from him/her. That way, you won't lose the web address your site has been using all these years. Make sure that after the purchase, that the domain is really in your name, and that you have control of it. Log into the registrar's account, change the password, and check that the domain is specified as owned by you and that you are also both its administratrative and technical contact.
In addition, if you are also not paying for your own web hosting account, but are using that friend's account, you should also sign up with a web host yourself and transfer your site there. This will free the site from dependence on your friend (or whoever). As the owner of your own domain and the web host's paying customer, you are no longer beholden to anyone.
In most other cases, such as in the situation where you put your website on a free web host, you will probably have to do what I did when I faced this problem with my first site. Buy a new domain and move your website there. It's probably the only solution in such a situation, since I doubt that any web host is going to entertain your request to buy their domain name from them.
Yes, this method is not without problem, including the very crucial one of lost traffic. Essentially, you will lose 100% of your traffic if you don't plan and carry out your move carefully. And even if you do it to perfection, you may still lose a large proportion (perhaps even all) your traffic.
To me, there's no way around this. You either bite the bullet now, as early as possible, or suffer later, when your site has such a huge amount of traffic that you'll lose even more when you move. And if you leave it too late, that move may be forced on you (either due to closure of the free web host or your web designer abandoning you or some such thing), so you cannot do it in a calm and measured way. Even worse, at that point in time, you may not even be able to log into your site to download all your files properly and have to reconstruct everything from scratch.
This is why I wrote what I did in Is it Possible to Create a Website Without Buying a Domain Name?. And it's also why my guide on how to create a website starts with the first step of getting a domain name yourself. Building a website without your own domain is a mistake you will pay for, sooner or later. And yes. I learnt ("learned" if you use a different variant of English) it the hard way too. So you are not alone. But I know it's cold comfort when you're in this boat. Personally, I think that if you can, and are willing to take the risk (or, more accurately, the certainty) of lost traffic and income, it's better to fix the problem now when it hasn't escalated to become an emergency.
To summarize, in case the exact procedure to take got lost in the explanations above, if you cannot buy the domain from whoever currently owns it, you're probably left with doing things the hard way:
Think of one or more potential new domain names. If you end up deciding that all the good names have been taken, don't give up hope; read this section on branding in one of my articles.
Once you have a list of possible names, immediately go to a registrar and try to buy it. Start with your first choice and move to the next best one on your list if the preferred one is not available. I recommend that you do this step yourself, and don't rely on someone else to do it for you. Otherwise, you may be back here reading this article again in a few years because you found out that your newest friend didn't register it under your name either.
Look for a commercial web host to move your site to, and sign up for an account there. Note that a lot of domain registrars also sell web hosting, so if you have already paid to host with them when you bought your domain earlier, skip to the next item.
Follow the steps given in How to Transfer Your Website From One Web Host to Another for your actual move. Since you have changed your domain name, remember to update the content on your site so that they use the new name and address.
Once your move is complete, you can (if you wish) announce it officially on your social media accounts. However, if your old site is on your friend's account, instead of being on some large, professionally-run free web host (where you are just a nameless number amidst hundreds of others, so they are indifferent to what you do), and you are afraid that if your friend gets wind of your move, he/she may deliberately disable your old site before you are ready, then you may want to wait till you are sure that the search engines have picked up your new site before announcing anything. If this is the case, and you're facing a potential spiteful friend (and soon-to-be enemy), you may need to be careful what you put on your old site in the interim as well, since that person may also visit it.
The whole thing is easier to contemplate and undertake when your site is new, and has little or no traffic, since you will have less to lose. I waited too long, so I actually took a huge hit to my traffic. It eventually recovered, but it took some time before it did. If you want to carry this out, make sure you are prepared for these consequences, and can weather the loss. There's not even any guarantee that your site will ever recover, or if it does, how long it will take. And treat this situation as one of life's hard lessons, as I did, that in the future, always get a domain before you start a website.
Copyright © 2018-2019 Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
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