Your WordPress developer has vanished. How to get back into your own site

If your WordPress developer disappeared, your site will usually keep working for now. The danger comes later, when something breaks and nobody can log in to fix it. So the first job is to get your access back, in the right order, while the site is still up.

I see this a lot. Clients usually come to me after weeks of unanswered emails. The site looks fine, but they own none of the keys to it.

Your site is made of four separate things

A WordPress site is four parts that live in different places. Each one has its own login.

• The domain name. This is your web address, held at a company called a registrar.

• The hosting. This is the server, a computer that stores your site and shows it to visitors.

• The WordPress admin. This is the dashboard where you edit pages.

• The extras. These are things like email sending, paid plugins, analytics and backups.

Your developer may hold the login for any of these. Sometimes they hold all four. Write down what you have now and what you do not.

Recover the domain name first

The domain matters most, because it points people to your site and often to your email too. If someone else controls it, they control where your visitors go.

Find out who holds it. A free lookup on the domain will show the registrar. Then contact that registrar and ask how to prove you are the owner.

Check whose name is on the record. If the developer registered it in their own name, the domain is legally theirs until it moves to you. That takes more time, so start early.

Get the hosting into your own name

Next, find out where the site lives. Look for old invoices, emails from a hosting company, or a direct debit on your bank statement.

There are two common setups.

1. You pay the host yourself. Ask the host to reset the main login to your email address. You will need to prove the account is yours.

2. The developer pays the host and bills you. Here the account is theirs. You need either a transfer from them or a move to a new host you control.

The second setup carries more risk. If the developer stops paying, the host may switch the site off. Moving to your own account is often the safest next step.

Getting back into WordPress itself

Once you have the hosting, getting into WordPress is usually the easy part. The normal route is the "Lost your password?" link on the login page. That only works if the reset email goes to an inbox you can read.

If the admin account uses the developer's email, you can still get in through the hosting. WordPress lists several ways to reset a password, including through the database. A developer can do this safely in a few minutes.

When you are back in, do three small jobs.

• Create a new admin account under your own email address.

• Remove or downgrade the old developer's accounts.

• Change the admin email in Settings, so warnings from WordPress reach you.

The extras are where the surprises hide

Paid plugins are the most common gap. Many need a licence key to get updates. If the key sits in the developer's account, the plugin stops updating and slowly becomes a security risk.

Look at the plugin list and note every paid one. Then check who bought each licence. You may need to buy new ones in your own name. That is normal and usually cheaper than the trouble an old plugin causes. I have written more about this in the hidden cost of plugin sprawl.

Check these as well.

• Email sending, such as a contact form service.

• Google Analytics and Search Console.

• Backups and any security service.

• The code itself, if the developer kept it in an online store such as GitHub.

If your WordPress developer disappeared for good, you can still recover the site

Sometimes there is no reply at all. The person may have closed their business or moved on. That is hard, but it is not the end of the site.

Each company involved will have a process to prove ownership. It takes longer without the developer, so keep records of invoices, contracts and any emails that show you paid for the work.

Do not make big changes while you wait. A site that has run on its own for months is often fragile. Updating everything at once is a common way to break it.

Once you are back in, find out what you have

Getting access back is only the start. Next you need to know the state of the site. How old is the code? Which plugins are out of date? Are the backups real? Has anything been hacked?

A WordPress site rescue covers these questions in order. If you want a written answer first, my site health report checks the whole site for a fixed £495 plus VAT. It tells you what is safe, what is at risk and what to fix first.

If the site is down right now, start with emergency support instead. For ongoing help after that, see my WordPress service.