Taking Over a Website Somebody Else Built: What to Check First

Most of the work I take on is a website somebody else built. The agency moved on, the freelancer stopped replying, or the person who looked after it left the business. It is nearly always recoverable, and usually for a lot less than starting again. Here is what I check first, in the order it matters.

Who owns the domain

Everything else hangs off the domain name. Find out which registrar it is with, and whose account it sits in. If it is registered to the old developer, get it moved into an account in your name before anything else happens. A website can be rebuilt. A domain somebody else controls is a much harder conversation.

Where it is hosted, and who pays

Same question for the hosting. If the bill goes to somebody you no longer speak to, the site is one missed payment away from going offline. You want the hosting account, or at least full admin access to it, in your name.

A backup before anyone touches it

Take a full copy of the files and the database and keep it somewhere that is not the same server. Then check it actually opens. A backup nobody has tested is a hope, not a backup.

What is actually installed

Log in and look at the theme and the plugins. On almost every inherited WordPress site I find plugins that have not been updated in years, premium plugins installed from a download with no licence, which means no updates and sometimes code nobody should be running, and a page builder holding the whole layout together. None of that means starting again. It tells you where the risk is.

Does the contact form still arrive

Send yourself an enquiry. On an inherited site this is the thing most likely to have quietly broken, and the one that costs money. If it does not arrive, that is the first fix, before anything cosmetic.

Then decide: repair or rebuild

Once you know who owns what and what is installed, the decision is usually obvious. If the site works and the content is right, update it, tidy it and look after it. A rebuild makes sense when the site cannot be edited without breaking, or when the business has outgrown it. Not just because somebody else built it.

If you have inherited a site and do not know where to start, that is exactly what my £150 audit is for. You get a written list of what is wrong and what matters, and you can hand it to anybody.