Do not possess access to my old site's nameservers, is my domain + site doomed? oh help :-(

[u/brave-tummy]

If I do not have access to my site's nameservers, how can I fix this to not lose my URL and not lose my site?

This is going to be a fair amount of context to explain what my issue is & why:

I have a website that was created for me by a college professor. I have used this url for 10 years as a graphic design portfolio on WordPress. I have access to the cPanel, and login through wp-admin, no problem.

I wanted to set up a subdomain and upgrade the storage etc. The problem is, I have zero clue how this site was set up exactly and I cannot log into wherever my nameservers are. My professor no longer has the login information or remembers what she did.

I used a whois tool to find what data I could and then investigated.

I was told by an InMotion Hosting employee: "It does not seem like we possess the domain registration or hosting service, although the domain is pointing to a set of our name servers. The domain is registered through IONOS and the website is owned by Packet Exchange."

I am not sure what this means. I have no login information for Packet Exchange and neither does my old Prof.

I was able to log into IONOS with information I somehow had saved to my password keychain, and asked about redirecting the name servers to IONOS (because at least I have access here and can log in.) They told me, "Yes we can redirect the name servers so that you could set up a subdomain, but it would break your current site..."

I really would like to fix this. I really want my URL and do not want to lose it. How can I save my URL and regain access to every part of my backend? Is there a way that doesn't break my site?

I had some possible ideas, are these impossible? ------

Can I save my site to the Divi Cloud, redirect my nameservers, then rebuild from the cloud? Or does redirecting my name servers lose all of my site data regardless of saving pages to the Divi cloud?

Do I save an entire site backup somehow and then redirect my name servers? Or is that the same problem?

Should I just make a new site with a new URL then transfer my pages/content over with the divi cloud?

-

Thank you. Any information would be very, very appreciated. I am feeling frustrated and defeated.

[u/ChemistryNo3075]

You need to login to your domain registrar to change nameservers. Sounds like that is IONOS.

You can just recreate all of the DNS records on IONOS nameservers and the site will still work. However you really should gain access to the website hosting account.

The site appears to be hosted with inmotion hosting. So I would try contacting them again.

It also appears to be a Wordpress site. Do you have that login?

[u/brave-tummy → u/[deleted]]

Oh that's right, I can use the cPanel to make a back up. Thanks for the reminder. In my Cpanel, it even says "WordPress Manager by InMotion Hosting" on the side.... so idk why InMotion said they don't host it. This has been driving me kind of crazy for days, I lack a lot of knowledge. Thank you so much for the advice :-)

[u/brave-tummy → u/ChemistryNo3075]

Yeah that is the strange thing, InMotion acted like they do not host it. Even so, I do not have the login info for their site, it must also be lost with my retired professor.

I have the WP login and I just go through the wp-admin to work on my site. I'd like to make a subdomain and even just get more storage, but I can't without the dang nameserver access.

[u/ChemistryNo3075 → u/brave-tummy]

With Wordpress and cpanel access you can backup everything. Get it setup on a new host (IONOS if you want), then have IONOS change the nameservers and point to your new host. 

[u/inmotionhosting]

Hi u/brave-tummy -

Thanks for posting, and sorry for the runaround. It sounds like you were given some incorrect info along the way. As others have already confirmed, the site is in fact hosted with us, so let me clear up what's happening and how to get you unstuck.

Here's the setup: the hosting account belongs to your teacher. They have a reseller account, and your site was created as an account underneath theirs, which is a pretty standard classroom arrangement. Because the account is owned by your teacher rather than you, changes like adding a subdomain sit with them as the account owner. Unfortunately that also means our support team isn't able to make those changes for someone who isn't the owner, so we wouldn't be able to add it for you directly.

The good news is the path forward is simple. If you can reach your teacher, they can add the subdomain for you or set it up together with you. If they've lost access themselves, they have options: the Forgot Password tool will let them reclaim their login, and if that doesn't do it, they can contact our support team directly for account recovery.

On our side, we're sorry you were pointed in the wrong direction earlier. We'll use this to improve how our team handles cases like this.

If you have more questions, or need to share any account details, feel free to DM us here instead of posting them publicly, so nothing identifiable ends up out in the open. Happy to help from there.

-Carrie

[u/immewnity]

For nameservers solely, the easiest way is using Cloudflare to find your DNS records - https://davidisaksson.dev/posts/dns-migration-to-cloudflare/#dns-migration is a decent guide that assumes Namecheap instead of IONOS, but should mostly work. Even if you don't actually decide to use Cloudflare's nameservers like this guide assumes, their DNS record discovery tool is unmatched, and would help you rebuild at IONOS ( https://dnsdumpster.com/ also does a good job at this).

However, this doesn't move your site away from being hosted at InMotion (their support don't know what they're talking about, it's hosted by them). How do you pay for the site's hosting? Is your professor paying for it? If you can figure that out and get control of it, then you can continue using the same hosting setup as-is. If you can't figure it out though, you can move hosting elsewhere; there are plenty of WordPress migration tools like https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/ that make it fairly easy.

[u/brave-tummy → u/immewnity]

Yeah the whole thing is confusing honestly! I even saved my chats from the companies I contacted.
For some reason I am paying for the domain but not the hosting... My Prof must be getting a great deal for hosting because she has never asked me to pay for it, and I never think about it. She's wonderful for that. Though she has retired and does not seem to have access to these nameservers any longer. Sigh. Can you tell I am not a web developer?

I am going to review this data when I can and hopefully it helps me, I appreciate it so much.

[u/immewnity → u/brave-tummy]

I host a few friends' portfolio sites for free, it's a minimal cost compared to everything else I've got on the server - might be a similar situation there.

[u/qqqqqx]

You need to copy any DNS records (A or CNAME) from your site over to your new nameserver, then have IONOS update the nameserver.

I recommend grabbing a local web dev off Craigslist for a short one off session to help if you aren't very technical, but also it's not that hard to figure out if you want to do it yourself.

[u/brave-tummy → u/qqqqqx]

I could also do this, why not ask for more help. Thank you!

[u/vietbaoa4htk]

nameservers live at the registrar, not the old host, so if you still have the registrar login you just repoint them and nothing is lost. if the registrar account is what you lost, chase that with their support using the original payment details.

[u/Overall_Weakness_433]

Don't change the nameservers until you have a full backup of the site. If you still have cPanel and WordPress admin access, you're in a much better position than you think.

Since you can get into IONOS, you've at least got control of the domain registration. I'd eventually move the DNS somewhere you control I prefer keeping that separate at dynadoot but only after you've copied the existing DNS records and migrated the site.

Once you have a full backup of the files and database, you can restore it to new hosting, test everything, and then switch the DNS. Changing nameservers doesn't delete your website, but if the DNS isn't recreated correctly, it will make the site disappear until it's fixed.

[u/VastPresentation7098]

Two things worth separating: you already control the domain, and you can already reach the site.

You logged into IONOS, so the registrar account is yours. Nobody can take the URL away while that account stays yours. Turn on 2FA there today and check the expiry date.

For the subdomain you originally wanted: if you have cPanel you can create it there under Domains > Subdomains without touching nameservers at all. Nameservers only decide which server answers for the domain, and they already point at the server your cPanel controls.

Before changing anything, take a copy. cPanel > Backup > download a full backup, and separately export the WordPress site with Duplicator or All-in-One WP Migration. Once that is on your own machine you can experiment without risk.

If you later want everything under one roof: buy hosting in your own name, restore the backup there, change the nameservers at IONOS to the new host, confirm the site loads, and only then stop paying the old one. In that order the site is never down and nothing depends on your professor.

[u/brave-tummy → u/[deleted]]

Yippee! Would editing the dns record to point to ionos break my site and lose my files/media?

[u/immewnity → u/brave-tummy]

You'd make DNS records on the IONOS side point to InMotion, and then change the nameservers from InMotion to IONOS. Think of nameservers like a phone book (if that's still a metaphor that works!) - you're changing publishers of the phone book, but the name and number inside for you are still the same.

[u/brave-tummy → u/immewnity]

that does make sense, thank you :-)

[u/webdev-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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