Nonprofit Nerd

If you don’t know anything about your web host, all is not lost! You can do a “Whois” search for your website (type “whois” into your preferred search engine and you’ll find many tools for doing this, but here’s one to get you started).  The whois results should give you a lot of information, but to find the web host, you’re looking for something called name server.

The name server translates a website name, (like nonprofitnerd.org) into a numerical string called an IP address that identifies the location of your website files on the web host’s server. Nameservers are usually (but not always) called something like ns1.myhostingservice.com. That bit after the “ns1” should be your web host. You’ll probably need to check their web site find customer service contact information. Once you reach customer service you will need to verify that your organization does indeed own you web site. If the contact person they have listed is still on staff at your organization, that person may have to talk to them personally. If not, they may require that you send them a written (possibly notarized) letter, or they may have other requirements, but don’t expect it to be quick and easy. After all, you want it to be hard for someone to fraudulently gain access to your hosting account.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Basics, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.