Moving a domain

  • Unknown's avatar
    crparishcouncil · Member ·

    Hi,

    I help run a community website for a local parish council. The domain & hosting is run by someone else on the council’s behalf. Recently they took a number of websites down & redirected them to their personal site ,including ours, after questions were asked about the invoices they were putting forward.
    From what I understand this person should not have access to our domain name which is how they took the sites down.
    The website we have is a WordPress one & the hosting & domain is on GoDaddy.
    What we want to do is take full control back of everything. The easiest solution seems to be build a new website on WordPress with free hosting (already done) & moving the domain. I’m offered mapping the domain however I think this would still leave us exposed to them editing the domain’s destination site again. Or I could upgrade mthe new website to a Personal site & get a free domain added…but I’d still have to get control of the domain which I’m unsure of how to do.

    Please can someone help & give me some guidance on this?

    Thanks

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    nixiack · Member ·

    Hi crparishcouncil,

    Wow, very sorry to hear that! It is always sad when something such as this happens :( If I understand correctly you were saying the domain(s) themselves are purchased from GoDaddy – the site may be on WordPress.com but ultimately the rights of the domain(s) were purchased from GoDaddy.

    The best solution would be to reach out to GoDaddy and have them update the information on the domain records for your user and pass – explain to them what has happened, including what you have put here, and they will ask you some security questions that were set up during the initial purchase of the domains (these cannot be changed without explicit authorization). Once you answer these questions it will verify that you are the owner and they will allow you to change the information back including the DNS records. You should be able to get them to red flag the person’s name who took them and re-pointed them so they cannot do it again. You can reach GoDaddy at the following information:

    https://www.godaddy.com/contact-us.aspx
    (480) 505-8877

    For WordPress.com domains you can find almost everything you need to know here:

    https://en.support.wordpress.com/all-about-domains/

    Best of luck!

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    @crparishcouncil Rock solid advice here from @nixiack8 on contacting GoDaddy for assistance in getting your domain back.

    Once you have secure control of your domain again and if you are setting up your new site here on WordPressdotcom, you would need one of the upgrade Plans in order connect your domain via domain mapping (you can use the domain credit in a Plan to either register a new domain or map an existing domain). Here’s more on that:
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/map-existing-domain/
    https://wordpress.com/pricing/

    Let us know if you need any other information on this end.

  • Unknown's avatar
    crparishcouncil · Member ·

    Hi,

    Thanks you to you both for your advice.

    I’m not sure if we could get through the security questions as the clerk of the council is billed for services only. Nothing was handed over from the set up apart from the WordPress login to edit the site. I forgot to add that the blog above is the backup site I built, not the current website.

    Would Go Daddy not help in this case?

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello again, This is something you would need to approach GoDaddy with directly. They do have local numbers in quite a number of countries at the “contact us” link that @nixiack8 provided. Best wishes in getting this resolved quickly.

    If you do decide to host a new site here on WordPressdotcom, we’ll be here to help out with any questions you may have about our platform.

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