If you created a website but do not need it anymore then you must want to take down your website.
Or someone is using your content for their website then what would you do?
You will take down their website legally.
But, do you know how to take down a website legally and personally (if yours).
In this article, we are going to answer all these questions so keep reading.
How To Take Down A Personal Website Temporarily?
Temporarily taking down a website means that you have closed your website temporarily or you have restricted the website for the visitor temporarily.
If you temporarily take down your website then the visitors will see messages like “This website is no longer accessible” or “This site is under construction”, this message will be removed as soon as the website gets online again.
To take down a personal website temporarily you need to follow the following steps.
- Sign in to your cPanel where your website is hosted.
- Search for the DNS setting option.
- You will find it in the left menu and click on it, if not search for it.
- Select the DNS record in the menu of cPanel and deactivate the DNS settings.
- Scroll to the bottom of the DNS settings and click on the show all setting options.
- Deactivate the top six DNS records.
- Wait for 90 minutes, after this your website will be temporarily down.
The website will remain down until the DNS settings are again activated.
Note: The above-mentioned steps can be different for different hosting providers and DNS management.
If you are not able to find any DNS settings in the cPanel then you should follow the steps given below.
- Go to your domain registrar.
- Head to the DNS settings option.
- Change the DNS records or deactivate them.
- You should remove the A Records which is connected to your hosting.
This will break the connection between your website and host after which you will be able to take down your site temporarily.
And when you want to leave your website just enter the A record again.
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How To Take Down Personal Websites Permanently?
It is easy to take down a personal website from the internet. You just need to follow the steps given below.
#1. Cancel Your Web Hosting Account
The first thing that you need to do is to cancel your web hosting. Once you do it then the web hosting provider will make sure your web pages are removed from their servers and they are no longer served to the visitor.
In some cases the web hosting provider stores the data and backup of the website for a few days in case you need it. But they will delete it after some time.
If you want to make sure they delete it immediately then ask them to do so.
#2. Cancel Your Domain Registration
Next, you should cancel the domain registration of your domain from a domain name provider like GoDaddy, Namecheap, or Yahoo. You should ask them to cancel the domain registration. Once it is done then the domain will be moved to the public pool and another person will be able to purchase it.
#3. Verify the Site Has Removed
Wait for 48 hours. Now, you should enter the domain name or the address of your website on the address bar of the browser and press enter.
Based on your domain name provider you should either see an error page, you can not access this website page, or an advertisement/promotion page.
How To Take Down A WordPress Site?
WordPress is well known because of its functionality and plugins and this is why it is easier to take down a WordPress site temporarily or permanently.
To take down the WordPress website you need to install and activate a plugin and that is the message Maintenance Mode Plugin.
Once you install and activate it, then you can modify the settings based on your preference for which you want the site to take down.
For example, if you want the collaborators to not access your site then you can select the “No” option for the collaborators.
How Hard Is It To Down An Illegal Website?
To be honest with you, it is very hard to take down a website completely. Not because the steps or method is hard but because of cloud computing.
Today, the internet is easily available, and to speed the loading speed and performance of the internet and its website cloud computing is being used.
In cloud computing, you can host a website in any country and make copies across the globe.
As you know each country has its laws including cyber laws. So, it is going to be hard to get a website from every country and it will be hard to find the exact geographical location of the website.
You must have also noticed that if a website is banned or blacklisted in a country it will continue to work in another country. So, if you want to take down the website then you will have to take help from each country’s government.
Another reason is that the person who works on illegal websites or uses other content for their use buys many domains in bulk. So whenever one website is taken down they just redirect all the traffic to the new domain and the website still stays live with another domain name.
But this doesn’t mean that you should take any action because some methods still work to take down a website. We will discuss them later in the article.
How To Take Down A Website Legally?
Some websites work illegally against government policies and to take them down you should make a domain lookup.
Follow the below-mentioned steps to take down a website:
- Go to the Whois.net website.
- Enter the domain or address of the website.
- Click on the look-up option.
- It will process the data and bring you the related information of the website.
- Use this information to inform the police to take down the website.
You will get information like the domain name, age, and servers location, etc. You should give all this information to the police/ cyber security along with the other details that you know about that illegal website (Make sure you let them know all the laws that are being broken by the website).
Also, you should file a legal complaint with the Illegal Crime Complaint Center (ICCC or IC3). The IC3 is affiliated with the FBI and accepts cyber complaints.
Then the Cyber security and FBI of that area or country will make sure the website gets down as soon as possible.
How To Take Down A Website Temporarily?
The most common way to take down a website is by the DDOS attack. In the attack, the attacker feeds the website server with so much traffic that it starts to slow down to crawl or shut down ultimately because they can’t handle this much volume of the traffic.
Note: This method is only preferable if you want to warn someone of something wrong like copying your website content. You should not try to temporarily take down your website like this because it can harm your website in some cases.
Conclusion:
Now, you know how to take down a website both legally and personally. You need to make sure that the website you want to take down is surely illegal if you want to report and file a case against it to cyber security.
