A site you are now responsible for, built by somebody who has stopped replying. No documentation, no handover, and nobody entirely sure what is safe to touch.
What it usually looks like
- No handover document, no notes, no idea what is custom and what is a plugin
- Nobody has the hosting login, or the domain is registered to the old developer
- A theme edited directly, so updating it would wipe the changes
- Plugins nobody can explain, some of them abandoned years ago
- A staging site that may or may not be the same as production
What I do
Inventory first. Hosting, PHP version, WordPress version, every plugin and theme with its version and update status, where DNS points, whether backups exist and whether anyone has ever tested restoring one. That last question usually gets an uncomfortable answer.
Then work out what is genuinely custom and worth keeping, what is a plugin doing a job badly, and what is a liability that needs replacing before it causes an outage. You get that written down, so the next person after me is not in the same position.
Getting access back
If the previous developer holds the hosting or the domain, that is worth sorting before anything technical. I can tell you what you need to ask for and what you are entitled to, and get the site somewhere you control.
What it costs
Diagnosis is a fixed £150. You get the actual cause in writing, whether anything is recoverable, and what fixing it takes. The repair is quoted after that, once I know what I am dealing with. Nothing gets touched before there is a verified backup. More on how it works.