Share your hosting and domain name access

2 different things, and that is the source of 90% of the confusion.

• Hosting is the plot of land. A computer switched on day and night, in a secure building, on which the files of your site are placed. You rent it, usually for 3 to 15 pounds a month.
• The domain name is the postal address. your-company.co.uk. You rent that too, usually for around 10 pounds a year.

The 2 are sometimes with the same supplier, sometimes with 2 different ones. That is neither better nor worse, it is simply a piece of information to give us.

The only word to remember from this guide. You stay the owner of both. A supplier receives a key, never the title deeds.

Your site is stored with a host. In France, the most common are OVHcloud, o2switch, Hostinger, Ionos and Gandi, but there are many others.

The procedure is exactly the same with a British host. In the United Kingdom you will most often come across Fasthosts and 123 Reg, and Ionos operates here too. The names on the screens change, the logic does not move an inch.

The simplest method. Search your inbox for a welcome message or an invoice, with the words hosting, renewal or subscription. The name of the supplier is on it.

If you find nothing. The public directory of domain names gives you the answer in 10 seconds, free and without signing up. Type your address into lookup.icann.org and look at the Registrar line. That is the supplier your domain name lives with, and 8 times out of 10 it is also your host.

For the curious, the command line version.

# Who manages your domain name, the official answer.
whois your-company.co.uk | grep -i registrar

# Which server your site points to today.
dig +short your-company.co.uk

None of this is compulsory. If you are lost, say so and we will do the search for you in 2 minutes.

Your site address, for example your-company.co.uk, is managed somewhere. Often in the same place as the hosting, sometimes elsewhere.

Here again, a domain renewal invoice puts you on the trail. The amount is small, around 10 pounds a year, and it often goes unnoticed.

Write down the name of the domain supplier, even if it is the same as the hosting one. That confirmation saves us a round trip.

The special case of national domains. For a .uk address, Nominet is the official registry and offers its own lookup tool. For a .fr address, that role falls to Afnic. Both are free and often more complete than the general directories for those particular endings.

And if the domain is in the name of your former supplier. It happens, above all on sites more than 10 years old. It is not lost and it can be recovered, there is an official transfer procedure. Tell us and we will walk you through it.

Every host files things away in its own way. Here is the exact path with the 4 we come across most.

OVHcloud, www.ovh.com/manager. Sign in to the customer area. There are 2 options, and the first is the simpler. Either you open your hosting then the FTP and SSH tab, and you create a dedicated access for us. Or you go through contact management, or the Users section, to give us access to the customer area itself.

o2switch, this host has 2 separate areas and the distinction matters. The customer area handles the admin and the invoices, keep that for yourself. The cPanel handles everything technical, and that is the one you share. o2switch explicitly recommends this, in fact. Your cPanel details are in your welcome email, and the official FAQ explains how to find them again.

Hostinger, hpanel.hostinger.com. Click your profile at the top right, then Account sharing, then Grant access. You enter our address and you choose the Admin or Collaborator role. The person invited must have a Hostinger account, creating one is free and takes 1 minute.

Ionos, login.ionos.co.uk. In your account settings, look for access delegation. You add a person by their email address, then you tick precisely what they can see, the websites, the databases, the emails, the billing. Untick the billing without hesitation.

⚠ The labels change, and often. These 4 interfaces are redesigned almost every year, and the words are never quite the same from one host to another. If you cannot find the exact label, look for the words user, collaborator, delegation or sharing. And if in doubt, send us a screenshot and we will tell you where to click.

2 options, you take the one that fits your host. Both work very well.

• The cleanest, when your host allows it. You add us as a user or a collaborator, with our address contact@metabacklinks.com. You keep your account for yourself, you see our name in the list, and you remove us in 1 click when the day comes. That is the case with Hostinger, Ionos and OVHcloud.
• The most direct, when it does not allow it. You send us the login details, securely. It is simple, it is common, and you change the password when the job is finished.

What we actually need, and nothing more.

• Access to your hosting, for the files and the backups.
• Access to your domain name, for the security certificate and the address settings.

What we do not need. Your payment method, your invoices, your personal inbox. If your host offers tick boxes, leave those 3 lines unticked.

If in doubt, do not force anything. Start with what you know how to do, and we will finish it together afterwards.

You will see them on screen, so let us make sure they do not take you by surprise.

SFTP, sometimes written FTP. It is the removal van of your website, the way to send and retrieve files. It asks for 3 things, a server address, a username and a password. Your host shows them in the section for your hosting, often under an FTP tab.

The DNS zone. It is the directory for your address, the short list that says which server to send your visitors to, and which server to send your emails to. It lives with whoever manages your domain name. We rarely touch it, we always keep a copy first, and your emails do not move when we rebuild a site.

The SSL certificate. It is what shows the little padlock and the https in front of your address. It is free with every serious host and renews itself. When it expires, browsers show a warning to your visitors, and that is precisely one of the things your Cybersecurity Agent watches for you.

You have nothing to do with these 3 words. They are here so that nothing sounds foreign when we mention them.

Gather what you have found, the hosting access and the domain name access.

The right channel. A single use link that erases itself once it has been read, or a password manager with sharing. We provide that link on request. Email and instant messaging keep a copy that nobody controls any more, which is why we avoid them.

What we need from you, in 4 lines.

Host.            OVHcloud, o2switch, Hostinger, Ionos, Fasthosts, 123 Reg or other
Hosting access.  login address, username, password
Registrar.       the domain name supplier, if it differs
Domain access.   login address, username, password

Once that access is in hand, your Webmaster Agent and your Cybersecurity Agent get to work. You have nothing more to do, and you stay the owner from start to finish.

These same principles apply to the other access a supplier needs. We have set each one out step by step, Google Search Console, the Google Ads account, the LinkedIn Page with its campaigns, Google Tag Manager, the admin area of your WordPress site and your booking calendar. In every case, the rule does not change, you add a person, you never lend a password.