I have a friend that bought a domain name and then had a company design him a website. The company then hosted the domain name for him through Webfusion.
Now a few years down the line he can’t get in touch with this company, but wants me to design him a new one. He has given me his log in details for 123-reg (where he bought the domain) Can I log in to this account and change the DNS to my hostgator account? I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes in the other web design company, am I doing anything wrong as at the end of the day he owns the domain name so its for him to do what he wants with it?
You said it… at the end of the day, the domain belongs to your friend, not the hosting company. Whomever has the login credentials for the domain registrar account can change the DNS at their whim, and no one has to explain to anyone why.
Sure, you and your friend owe nothing to Webfusion. Hostgator, however, may want you to add your friend’s domain name to your Hostgator account if you’re going to use their DNS.
Either way, I suggest you also check your friend’s domain WHOIS to make sure Webfusion doesn’t own it in any sense. Some hosting companies (not necessarily Webfusion) have the bad practice of registering their clients’ domain names in their names, and later making transfers very difficult.
Is this something to do with his emails? As the email address which for example is: johnsmith@htr.uk.com goes to his outlook account. I haven’t come across this before.
It sounds like your friend doesn’t have the domain hosted anywhere. When that happens, many registrars will “park” the domain and even set up a web page on it with links to make some money.
I think all you need to do is find a web hosting company, sign up, and then log into 123-reg and change the DNS to point to your web hosting company’s DNS servers. The web hosting company will give you that information when you sign up.
As for the email, it sounds as if 123-reg is providing email service. Most registrars do, though that’s usually an additional cost. When someone provides email service, the email can collect on their server until you download it, or it can be forwarded immediately to some other address. It’s probably the latter in the case of your friend’s Outlook, unless he set up an account within Outlook to check for email at 123-reg.
Once you get a web host, email comes with the account for the same price, so you can cancel any service but plain registration at 123-reg.
