How do I keep my website up-and-running when the webmaster passes away?

I know this sounds bizarre, but my webmaster passed away suddenly and I need to keep my website up and running. I do not have access to his PC. I believe that he was hosting the site on his own servers (not sure). And he is listed as the registrant for my domain name, along with my company name. Ideally what I want to do is move the website to another hosting company and then have someone else administer the website. I assume I would need the software that he used to develop the site in order to do this. HELP! I%26#039;ve never encountered a problem like this before and I can%26#039;t find any help on the web.

How do I keep my website up-and-running when the webmaster passes away?

Unless one of his heirs/trustees is understanding and technically minded, you may be stuck for the address until it expires. Since your company name is also a registrant, you may be able to have it transferred to you directly - ask the name provider.

If possible, get any backups for the site. This will save you a lot of work if the site is compex.

You CAN capture the entire site if no server-side scripting was involved (if it is just html files, javascript and images). Use wget or another website grabber for it.

You would then upload it to some other host. In general, you don%26#039;t need to change anything (and if you do, the chnages are always very minor).

If the site is truly gone (servers offline), you may be able to get a copy from http://www.archive.org (put the address in the Wayback Machine box) though it might be a bit out of date.

If the site used server side scripting, you are in deep trouble unless you can gain ftp access to the server it is on.

If you are stuck without control of the name, you may have to register a new one and email everyone to let them know.

If the name is set to expire relatively soon, you can have godaddy.com try to automatically acquire it for you when that happens. You can check the expiry date by opening a command window / console and typing:

whois sitename.com

It will show you a bunch of info including the expiry date.

To further armor plate yourself against future troubles, register the name seperately (at godaddy.com for example). Have it point to wherever your site is hosted. If the host goes bad and you need to change, you can point the domain name at a new host.

Important: You should have direct control over the name, even if you contract out everything else.

You should be able to get some help from whatever company you want to take over the site.