Client doesn't know where their WordPress site is hosted
When clients don't know their hosting provider and lack full WordPress admin credentials, developers hit a wall. DNS records often point to proxies like Cloudflare or AWS, masking the actual host and making it impossible to access the server files needed to restore admin permissions.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Doing whois look-ups and searching DNS recordsDid this help you?
- 2Checking page source for hints of plugins or hosting providersDid this help you?
- 3Looking through legacy or old company accounts for admin credentialsDid this help you?
- 4Trying browser-specific troubleshooting stepsDid this help you?
- 5Closing the account to switch to an alternative providerDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The account they gave me is NOT the admin to WP, I'm not even sure what permission level it is set at, so I have no way to check or download plugins, which was also in my contract.”source ↗
“They didn't know where their website was hosted. So after a lot of whois look-ups, I was at a dead end since it pointed to Cloudflare and, you guessed it, they didn't know the account for that either.”source ↗
“Now, after even MORE digging, I see that everything routes to AWS. I give them the names of many different website hosts that would point a WP site to AWS (WP Engine, Cloudways, etc.) No dice.”source ↗
“I have access to Cloudflare and Name but I can't seem to find anything about where the site is actually hosted to be able to edit the WP files to restore admin access.”source ↗
“I have been unable for several days to log in to GoDaddy.”source ↗
“Customer support turned out to be an AI bot that said the problem was my browser (Chrome) and suggested several workarounds that didn't work.”source ↗
“When I finally got in touch with a human he put me on hold for 30 minutes and then hung up.”source ↗
Where this came up
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