October 31, 2006

Curious George: Hosting Mystery A client of mine wants to switch hosting companies but cannot find/remember/dig up the present hosting info. I have been trying to sleuth it out but no luck.

anyone know how I can find out the hosting co. by the domain name? do I need to know the present host to switch to the new one? thanks monkeys!!

posted by Medusa 17 years ago
  • argh! most of that was suppoosed to be in "more inside"
  • a whois search on the domain should get you the info needed on the hosting company, unless it's been deliberately obscured. i guess it's best to know the present host to make sure you transfer a complete copy of the site.
  • Enter the site name into Netcraft and it will give you full details on the site.
  • Hosting (generally) ain't free. Perhaps a review of your client's credit card bills might give a hint as to the hosting company. I get billed quarterly by one host and annually by the other.
  • srsly, Network Solution's whois is the stalker's friend. there's also whois.net, but not as good, imo.
  • thanks glama and arma, I *think* I've got it figured out now...silly client!
  • If you don't know the hosting company how do you know the "new" company won't actually be the "old" company?!? Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Ah yes whois is your friend. I've had this happen a couple of times before. Your next job is to impress upon this client (in fact any client) that this information is VERY IMPORTANT and they MUST PRINT OUT AND KEEP A COPY IN THEIR IMPORTANT BUSINESS DOCUMENTS FOLDER or it will result in DOOOOOOOOOOM.
  • oh gomichild, if you knew how many things I have already tried to impressed upon this particular client as important....I've all but given up on the professional recommendations with them. I am going to take their money and hope they don't wind up blaming me for their own very bad decisions....
  • Sympathy sweetie. I had to sit one of mine down at a computer yesterday and teach them how to copy and paste and type into a text file just so I could get the final content for a section of their site I'm building. If you need a horror story - one of my clients who is in this vein of being completely hopeless ended up paying his former domain registrar/hosting company over 200 dollars when he let things lapse and they refused to allow him to just transfer his domain to a new service. Dodgy practice on their part - sure - but things like this happen if you don't keep on top of them.
  • I was having some fun talking my mother-in-sin through trying to open an MS Works document in MS Word last night. She equates Windows with Office, that is, all PCs have Office. Her buddy using MS Works is even worse, obv. Plus her husband is a serial downloader, and the PC is riddled with crap. I have batch script set up on their machine which updates and runs Spybot, Adaware etc. which I run each time I visit.
  • MS Works?! With the biting and the crashing and the blue screeens, m'whayy.
  • glaven!
  • I should also add that she is a lovely lady, and because I'm doing the website for her new business, she is a client as well.
  • DNS Stuff