Hello, I apologize if this is a repeat question, or if this is not the correct place for this question.
Our website owner died about a year ago. I am now the only administrator on the site, but with very limited admin powers (there is one other, but he is currently inactive and I can't seem to reach him). The owner's daughter asked us to keep the site running in his honor. However, she hasn't been back to check on us since October (10 months). I have been trying to contact her with some questions, but so far have not been able to reach her. My main concern at this moment is that I do not know whether she is planning to continue to pay the upkeep fee, or if she has forgotten about the site. (She never actually said whether she was planning to pay it after her father's original subscription expired.) Her silence has me a bit worried that the site might come to the end of its subscription and close down on us without the members being given proper notice. I don't want to alarm them if there is no cause, but I also don't want them to lose their work unexpectedly. I know that there is no way for me to access the owner controls, I'm not asking that. (Though if there is a way to gracefully close down the site, I might need that information soon. I'm running a bit ragged these days.)
I just need to know if there is a way to see when the site's next payment is due, so that I have a rough idea how long we have before it shuts down on us on the off chance we have been forgotten. Is there a way to see our expiration date?
I did look the site name up on WHOIS. Please forgive my ignorance, but, is "Registry Expiry Date" the date the site would expire, or is that something else? And also, the date reads: 2021-11-08. Is that November 08, or August 11? And if that is our actual expiration, how reliable is the information on WHOIS and what can I expect to happen to our website if the owner's daughter doesn't renew the subscription? Will we have warnings? Or will it happen suddenly?
Thank you for your time. It is very much appreciated.
Can you make a forum backup?
https://docs.mybb.com/1.8/administration/backups/
If so, backup the database, if you have access to files then backup these as well (could work without them), then start migrating everything to a new server and domain name, close the old board placing a notice of the new site.
I think the expiration date might be "November 8", I just did check one site and I will assume these who-is sites use international date formats instead of the confusing USA formats.
If you can not make a backup of any type then, well, your options are close to null other than start from scratch.
The daughter of the former owner could be able to transfer the domain or account access, or similar, but you would need to contact her first and cross your fingers she is 1) willing to take the time and 2) has enough technical knowledge to even attempt these.
(2021-07-22, 04:11 PM)Quixilated Wrote: [ -> ]Hello, I apologize if this is a repeat question, or if this is not the correct place for this question.
Our website owner died about a year ago. I am now the only administrator on the site, but with very limited admin powers (there is one other, but he is currently inactive and I can't seem to reach him). The owner's daughter asked us to keep the site running in his honor. However, she hasn't been back to check on us since October (10 months). I have been trying to contact her with some questions, but so far have not been able to reach her. My main concern at this moment is that I do not know whether she is planning to continue to pay the upkeep fee, or if she has forgotten about the site. (She never actually said whether she was planning to pay it after her father's original subscription expired.) Her silence has me a bit worried that the site might come to the end of its subscription and close down on us without the members being given proper notice. I don't want to alarm them if there is no cause, but I also don't want them to lose their work unexpectedly. I know that there is no way for me to access the owner controls, I'm not asking that. (Though if there is a way to gracefully close down the site, I might need that information soon. I'm running a bit ragged these days.)
I just need to know if there is a way to see when the site's next payment is due, so that I have a rough idea how long we have before it shuts down on us on the off chance we have been forgotten. Is there a way to see our expiration date?
I did look the site name up on WHOIS. Please forgive my ignorance, but, is "Registry Expiry Date" the date the site would expire, or is that something else? And also, the date reads: 2021-11-08. Is that November 08, or August 11? And if that is our actual expiration, how reliable is the information on WHOIS and what can I expect to happen to our website if the owner's daughter doesn't renew the subscription? Will we have warnings? Or will it happen suddenly?
Thank you for your time. It is very much appreciated.
That's a tough situation you're in. Sorry for your lost by the way. "Registry Expiry Date" on WHOIS indicates domain's name expiration date. So your domain won't be available to people to reach at 08.11.21, so in November. If you somehow can't manage to get full admin rights and ownership of the hosting, there's no any difference between domain's expiration and hosting's expiration for you as no one will be able to reach to website once domain is expired, even though forum files remain solid on hosting. If you only did know the FTP information to log in, you could've back up all the files to restart the website on a different domain and hosting later on but you need admin privilage to get into admin cp to get a database backup to make that work. If you could get into CPanel, you could've register a new domain and set it up to work on host and it wouldn't be a problem. You can check the name servers of your domain when you look up on WHOIS and see your hosting provider's name. But then again, it won't make a difference since they can't share any sensitive data about their clients with you.
So, website will go down at 08.11.21 for good even if hosting service won't, as no one will able to get into website. I really do hope that you can get in touch with her as soon as possible.
Also note that minimum registration date for domains are 1 year, while hostings 1 month. What I'm trying to say is that the website might go down any moment since we don't know the hosting plan they're paying for and as I said, probably hosting provider won't share such informations with you, so it may be a matter of time. I suggest you to inform everyone with a huge announcement and maybe open a new forum, if you can't get get full rights to FTP, CPanel and Admin CP.
I wish you all the best, good luck!
(2021-07-22, 08:53 PM)timelord Wrote: [ -> ] (2021-07-22, 04:11 PM)Quixilated Wrote: [ -> ]Hello, I apologize if this is a repeat question, or if this is not the correct place for this question.
Our website owner died about a year ago. I am now the only administrator on the site, but with very limited admin powers (there is one other, but he is currently inactive and I can't seem to reach him). The owner's daughter asked us to keep the site running in his honor. However, she hasn't been back to check on us since October (10 months). I have been trying to contact her with some questions, but so far have not been able to reach her. My main concern at this moment is that I do not know whether she is planning to continue to pay the upkeep fee, or if she has forgotten about the site. (She never actually said whether she was planning to pay it after her father's original subscription expired.) Her silence has me a bit worried that the site might come to the end of its subscription and close down on us without the members being given proper notice. I don't want to alarm them if there is no cause, but I also don't want them to lose their work unexpectedly. I know that there is no way for me to access the owner controls, I'm not asking that. (Though if there is a way to gracefully close down the site, I might need that information soon. I'm running a bit ragged these days.)
I just need to know if there is a way to see when the site's next payment is due, so that I have a rough idea how long we have before it shuts down on us on the off chance we have been forgotten. Is there a way to see our expiration date?
I did look the site name up on WHOIS. Please forgive my ignorance, but, is "Registry Expiry Date" the date the site would expire, or is that something else? And also, the date reads: 2021-11-08. Is that November 08, or August 11? And if that is our actual expiration, how reliable is the information on WHOIS and what can I expect to happen to our website if the owner's daughter doesn't renew the subscription? Will we have warnings? Or will it happen suddenly?
Thank you for your time. It is very much appreciated.
That's a tough situation you're in. Sorry for your lost by the way. "Registry Expiry Date" on WHOIS is indicates domain's name expiration date. So your domain won't be available to people to reach at 08.11.21, so in November. If you somehow can't manage to get full admin rights and ownership of the hosting, there's no any difference between domain's expiration and hosting's expiration for you as no one will be able to reach to website once domain is expired, even though forum files remain solid on hosting. If you only did know the FTP information to log in, you could've back up all the files to restart the website on a different domain and hosting later on but you need admin privilage to get into admin cp to get a database backup to make that work. If you could get into CPanel, you could've register a new domain and set it up to work on host and it wouldn't be a problem. You can check the name servers of your domain when you look up on WHOIS and see your hosting provider's name. But then again, it won't make a difference since they can't share any sensitive data about their clients with you.
So, website will go down at 08.11.21 for good even if hosting service won't, as no one will able to get into website. I really do hope that you can get in touch with her as soon as possible.
Also note that minimum registration date for domains are 1 year, while hostings 1 month. What I'm trying to say is that the website might go down any moment since we don't know the hosting plan they're paying for and as I said, probably hosting provider won't share such informations with you, so it may be a matter of time. I suggest you to inform everyone with a huge announcement and maybe open a new forum, if you can't get get full rights to FTP, CPanel and Admin CP.
I wish you all the best, good luck!
(2021-07-22, 08:42 PM)Omar G. Wrote: [ -> ]Can you make a forum backup?
https://docs.mybb.com/1.8/administration/backups/
If so, backup the database, if you have access to files then backup these as well (could work without them), then start migrating everything to a new server and domain name, close the old board placing a notice of the new site.
I think the expiration date might be "November 8", I just did check one site and I will assume these who-is sites use international date formats instead of the confusing USA formats.
If you can not make a backup of any type then, well, your options are close to null other than start from scratch.
The daughter of the former owner could be able to transfer the domain or account access, or similar, but you would need to contact her first and cross your fingers she is 1) willing to take the time and 2) has enough technical knowledge to even attempt these.
Thank you both so much for taking the time to reply. I am very grateful, and your information does help.
I’m afraid I have no idea whether or not it is possible to backup the database or how to begin. I fell backwards into this admin job by a slow but steady series of increasingly unfortunate occurrences, and I am woefully under-qualified in the computer knowledge side of things. But I will share this information with a website savvy person and hopefully they will be able to tell me what options we have. I have put in a request on my site for such a person to pm me if such a one exists among the members.
To be honest, I think the owner’s daughter would be fine with handing the keys to someone as long as they keep her father’s legacy alive (we adored him, so we all would happily remember him forever). And also, she was always the one who did the maintenance for her dad, so she would know how to do the backup if that was the way to go. My only problem there is locating her so we can ask.
I do have members who have said they would be happy to pay the fees and/or take up ownership, but I know that legally we simply don’t have a way to do any of that until she returns to the site.
I’m happy to know we have until November (as opposed to August) as that gives her more time to remember us, and it gives us more time to make plans for what we would do if she doesn’t.
Anyway, thank you again for your replies! It is much appreciated.
Best wishes,
—Quix
Can you show us the site?
This?
(2021-07-23, 12:04 PM)Ricsca Wrote: [ -> ]Can you show us the site?
This?
Yes, that is the site.
I think there is not much I can do other than wait. Either she will return or she won’t. If she doesn’t, I suppose I will have my answer about whether or not she intends to continue to pay the fees in November when the website either disappears or doesn’t. I don’t think I have access to the things I would need to make backups or copies of the site.
The site is behind on updates, but I know nothing about websites or computers so I don’t know if that is a non-issue or if it is important. We are running 1.8.24 instead of 1.8.27? I don’t know what that means though.
Please note, as I think was already mentioned, that the November date is about the expiration of the domain itself, the server could be in a different provider with a different expiration date, either before or after the domain expires.
It is possible both services (domain + server) are on the same provider, with the same expiration date, but this is something Who-is isn't going to tell you.