Who owns your website? Domain, hosting, code and content

"My website" is four separate things, often in four different places, sometimes in someone else's name. Most people discover this at the worst possible moment — when they want to change developer, or when the person who built it stops answering.

Worth ten minutes now.

1. The domain

The most important one, because everything else can be rebuilt and this cannot be recovered if someone else holds it.

Check: run a WHOIS lookup on your domain. Look at the registrant organisation and the administrative contact. Many domains use privacy protection, which hides the details publicly — in that case, log into the registrar account yourself. If you cannot, that is the answer.

What you want: the domain registered to your business, in an account you control, with your email as the contact, and auto-renew on.

Common problem: registered by an agency or freelancer "to make it easier". They may be entirely trustworthy, and it still means your business depends on them answering an email.

To fix it: ask for the transfer. A reasonable provider will do it without argument. Reluctance is itself informative.

2. The hosting

Check: can you log into the hosting control panel with your own credentials? Not "does my developer have access" — can you.

What you want: an account in your business name, billed to your card, with your own login. Your developer can have an additional user.

Common problem: the site sits inside an agency's reseller account. This is normal and usually fine, but it means you cannot move without their cooperation, and you may not have direct access to backups.

3. The code

Theme and plugins. Free ones from the WordPress directory are GPL and yours to use. Premium ones are licensed — check the licence is in your name. A premium plugin licensed to your developer stops updating when that relationship ends, which quietly puts you on the abandoned software problem.

Custom code. This is the one to get in writing. If someone built a custom theme or bespoke functionality, who owns it? Unless your contract says otherwise, the developer may retain copyright and grant you a licence to use it.

What you want: written confirmation that you own the custom work, or at minimum a perpetual licence. Ask at the start of a project; it is an awkward conversation afterwards.

4. The content

Your text, images and data. Generally yours — with two caveats.

Stock photography is licensed, not owned, and the licence may be in the designer's name. Check whether it transfers.

Copy written by an agency may be their copyright unless assigned. Rare to be enforced, but worth having in the contract.

The ten-minute audit

Write down, for each item: what it is, who holds the account, what the login is, and when it renews.

1. Domain registrar — can you log in?
2. DNS — sometimes separate from the registrar
3. Hosting — can you log in?
4. WordPress admin — do you have an administrator account?
5. Premium plugin and theme licences — in whose name?
6. Email — where is it hosted?
7. Analytics and Search Console — are you an owner or just a user?
8. Backups — where are they, and can you reach them?

Store it in a password manager. This document is the thing that turns "our developer disappeared" from a crisis into an inconvenience.

If you find something in someone else's name

Ask, politely and in writing, for it to be transferred. Most of the time it happens without drama — it was convenience rather than strategy.

If they refuse or go quiet, your position depends on which item it is. Hosting and code can be rebuilt. The domain is the one worth taking seriously, and if it is registered to them you may need legal advice.

If you have already lost access, there is usually a route back.

When you hand access to someone new

Give them their own accounts rather than your credentials, and write down what you gave. The procedure is here — it takes ten minutes and makes revoking clean later.