Verify Domain Ownership and Registrar Access

Task Library

Confirm the business actually owns its domain and can log into the registrar – the single point of failure under everything else in digital plumbing.

Category: Digital Plumbing

Use this when onboarding any client, when nobody remembers where the domain is registered, or when a past webmaster "handled all that."

Inputs

  • The domain name(s) in use
  • The business owner present (recovery may require their identity/email/payment history)
  • WHOIS lookup access (any public WHOIS tool)

Steps

  1. Run a WHOIS lookup: identify the registrar, creation/expiry dates, and registrant (often privacy-masked – the registrar is the key fact).
  2. Ask the owner to log into that registrar while you watch. If they can't, find who can: old webmaster, ex-agency, a defunct email. This is the moment to recover control, not during an outage.
  3. If a third party holds the domain, transfer it: initiate a registrar account change or domain transfer into an account owned by the business, with the owner's email on file.
  4. Harden the account: owner's current email as primary contact, two-factor authentication on, domain transfer lock on, auto-renew on with a valid payment method.
  5. Check expiry: renew now if less than 6 months out. An expired domain takes the website, email, and every profile link down with it.
  6. Confirm DNS management access from this account (or document where DNS is delegated) – sibling skills depend on it.
  7. Record registrar, account holder, expiry date, and nameservers in the client record.

Definition of done (QA checklist)

  • Owner can personally log into the registrar account holding the domain
  • Registrant/account belongs to the business, not a vendor or ex-employee
  • 2FA on, transfer lock on, auto-renew on with valid payment; expiry >6 months out
  • DNS management location confirmed and documented with nameservers
  • Linked back to the definitive article and relevant siblings
  • Complies with Blog Posting Guidelines (if it publishes content)

Example(s)

  • Example needed – run the Meta-Article Prompt after first real run.

File in the zip: skills/digital-plumbing/verify-domain-ownership-and-registrar-access.md. Download the Task Library zip.

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