How To Get Web Site Back From 3rd Party?

PDN

Apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but this seems the closest I could find.

Basically I need to know how you can get your own website back from a third party.

We used to run our Church website ourselves, but a couple of years ago made the mistake of moving it to a company called Innovative Options in Drogheda. Now we can't access our site or update it, and I can't make contact with this company.

Their own website has been under construction for months - so if they can't even look after their own website then they obviously can't look after anyone else's. They don't seem to respond to phone calls or emails. The site is hosted by digiweb - but they won't help me because the contract they have is with Innovative Options.

We don't want to change our domain name as that would mean getting in touch with thousands of contacts around the world to notify them. Meanwhile our website is out of date and I'm getting numerous complaints.

By now I'm so frustrated and mad with this situation that I'm ready to spit blood.

Any suggestions as to what we can do that doesn't involve violence or any other illegal activity?

IRE60

have you a url for the site?

andywozhere

You could write to them. Their company name is registered with the Companies Registration Office, just type in "Innovative Options" into the search facility on http://www.cro.ie/search/CompanySearch.aspx and it should bring up their details (it did for me - well their postal address anyway).

I'd also imagine that Digiweb would also have to give you account details if you can prove that you are the legal owner of the website.

RedFly

Who is your domain registered with?

You can simply copy your site or build a new one on new hosting and change the domain nameservers to point to the new hosting.

emanresu

As you said their website is "Under Construction" so you can't get into it by clicking on the homepage, but you can access pages (possibly old information) by clicking on:
http://www.innovativeoptions.ie/about-us.php or
http://www.innovativeoptions.ie/contact.php or
http://www.innovativeoptions.ie/graphic-design.php or
http://www.innovativeoptions.ie/marketing.php ,and there are various other links on those pages, some of which work and some don't.

Note that the address information in the second link above is different from the address registered with the CRO.
They say "We have moved office to a new location" and the new address is given. A phone number is given at the bottom of that page.
You could check if its a different number to the one you have for them.

mneylon

andywozhere wrote: »

I'd also imagine that Digiweb would also have to give you account details if you can prove that you are the legal owner of the website.

They shouldn't.
If they did it would mean that they have zero respect for client relationships, data etc.,

mneylon

PDN wrote: »

Apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong place, but this seems the closest I could find.

Basically I need to know how you can get your own website back from a third party.

<snip>
Any suggestions as to what we can do that doesn't involve violence or any other illegal activity?

Is the domain a .ie or a .com?

Is the domain registered to you or to the other company you were dealing with? You can check the whois details online using service such as http://mydomain.ie/

If the company you were dealing with have vanished or are unreachable I suspect you may have to write off the current website content

The thing you *might* be able to get is the domain, but this would depend on whether it was registered to you or to someone else.

andywozhere

Blacknight wrote: »

They shouldn't.
If they did it would mean that they have zero respect for client relationships, data etc.,

If they are the legal owner of a website surely they have a right the account details?... unless of course they own the website but do not own the hosting? Or maybe they don't own the website or hosting at all and technically the web designer/developer owns it (if they were the ones who paid for the domain and hosting)?

mneylon

andywozhere wrote: »

If they are the legal owner of a website surely they have a right the account details?... unless of course they own the website but do not own the hosting? Or maybe they don't own the website or hosting at all and technically the web designer/developer owns it (if they were the ones who paid for the domain and hosting)?

It's not that simple.

Company / person X buys hosting (or any other service) from Hosting company A

The only contractual relationship that can exist is between the entity that entered into that contract and the hosting provider. If the website "owner" is the person who paid for the account then they'd have the login details etc., so it's not an issue.

Nobody else has anything to do with it

Period.

It is not the hosting provider's problem who "owns" the files. If there is a dispute between the designer / developer and the client then they need to resolve that between themselves.

So if a designer / developer / $random entity buys hosting etc., from provider X then the only party that provider X should be dealing with is whoever bought the services from them.

PDN

Blacknight wrote: »

It's not that simple.

Company / person X buys hosting (or any other service) from Hosting company A

The only contractual relationship that can exist is between the entity that entered into that contract and the hosting provider. If the website "owner" is the person who paid for the account then they'd have the login details etc., so it's not an issue.

Nobody else has anything to do with it

Period.

It is not the hosting provider's problem who "owns" the files. If there is a dispute between the designer / developer and the client then they need to resolve that between themselves.

So if a designer / developer / $random entity buys hosting etc., from provider X then the only party that provider X should be dealing with is whoever bought the services from them.

I checked and the domain is owned by digiweb. The status is 'locked' -whatever that means.

The thing that really sucks is that we used this domain name and used it as a church long before we had any contact with innovative options. So by entering into an agreement with them, rather than doing the website ourselves, we appear to have allowed our ownership of our site to be hijacked from us.

mneylon

PDN wrote: »

I checked and the domain is owned by digiweb. The status is 'locked' -whatever that means.

The thing that really sucks is that we used this domain name and used it as a church long before we had any contact with innovative options. So by entering into an agreement with them, rather than doing the website ourselves, we appear to have allowed our ownership of our site to be hijacked from us.

The "locked" status is to prevent hijacks .. so don't worry about that.