If you have ever been asked for your “hosting login” or your “DNS” and had no idea what that meant, this guide is for you. A website is not one single thing. It is a few separate parts that work together, and they are often bought from different companies. When something breaks, or when you bring in a developer, knowing which part is which saves a lot of time.
I will explain each part, what it does, and why a developer needs access to it. No prior knowledge needed.
The quick version: a website is like a shop
It helps to picture a physical shop.
- Your domain name is the address on the sign above the door.
- Your domain registrar is the company that sold you that address.
- DNS and name servers are the signposts that tell people which building the address actually points to.
- Your hosting is the building itself, where all your stock and fittings are kept.
- WordPress is the shopfit and the till inside, the system you use to run the place.
You can own the sign but rent the building from someone else. You can even keep the sign and move to a new building. That is exactly how websites work, and it is why these parts are separate.
Your domain name
Your domain name is your address on the internet, like yourbusiness.co.uk. It is what people type to reach you, and it is what your email address is built on.
The important thing to understand is that a domain name is not your website. It is just the address. The website, the actual pages and content, lives somewhere else entirely (the hosting, which we will come to).
The domain name registrar
The registrar is the company you bought your domain name from. Common ones are GoDaddy, Namecheap, 123 Reg, and Cloudflare.
Access to the registrar is the most powerful access there is, because it controls where your domain points. With it, you can send your domain to any hosting in the world. This is the ultimate safety net: as long as you control the registrar, you can always move your website away from a host that is slow, broken, or difficult.
If you only keep control of one thing, keep control of your registrar account.
If you have not bought a domain yet, my own favourite registrar is Porkbun. The pricing is fair, the interface is clean, and it does not bury you in upsells the way some of the bigger names do.
DNS and name servers
This is the part that confuses almost everyone, so here is the simple version.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is the internet’s address book. When someone types your domain, DNS is what looks up the answer to “which server should I actually send this person to?” and points them to the right place.
Name servers are the specific address books in charge of your domain. Your registrar settings say something like “the name servers for this domain are the ones at Cloudflare”, and from then on Cloudflare holds your DNS records. Changing your name servers is like telling the post office which directory to use for your address.
You do not need to understand the detail. You just need to know that DNS is the layer that connects your domain name to your hosting, and a developer will sometimes need to change a DNS record to fix email, point the site at a new server, or verify ownership.
Website hosting
Your hosting is the computer, called a server, where your website’s files and database actually live. When someone visits your site, the hosting is what sends the pages back to them.
Hosting is usually a monthly or yearly subscription with a company such as SiteGround, Kinsta, GoDaddy, or a smaller web company that set your site up. This is a different account from your registrar, even if you happen to have bought both from the same company.
Hosting access matters more than people expect. WordPress admin lets a developer work on the site from the inside, but hosting or control-panel access lets them work underneath it, at the server level. Some problems cannot be fixed from inside WordPress at all. If a bad update takes the whole site offline, a developer often cannot even log in to WordPress to undo it, but with hosting access they can go in from the ground up and sort it.
If you are choosing hosting yourself, two I like: Cloudways for managed WordPress hosting that stays fast without much fuss, and Bunny.net for fast, affordable content delivery. The Cloudways link is a referral, so it gives me a small credit at no extra cost to you.
WordPress
WordPress is the software your website is built with. It runs on your hosting and gives you the dashboard where you edit pages, write posts, and manage the site. Around 4 in 10 websites use it.
It is worth knowing that “WordPress” actually means two different things, and this trips people up.
WordPress.org versus WordPress.com
WordPress.org is the free, open-source software. You install it on hosting you control, and you can add any plugin, edit any code, and move it wherever you like. This is what most businesses use, and what a developer normally works on.
WordPress.com is a paid hosting service run by a company called Automattic. It hosts a managed version of the same software for you. It is simpler to start with, but it limits which plugins and code you can use on cheaper plans, and your site lives on their platform rather than hosting you fully control.
The short rule: if you pay a hosting company and can install any plugin you like, you are on WordPress.org. If your site is managed at wordpress.com and you log in there, you are on WordPress.com. If you are not sure, that is fine, a developer can tell in a minute.
For what it is worth, I work with WordPress.org sites, not WordPress.com. I do not manage WordPress.com sites as a service. If you are on WordPress.com and feel boxed in by it, I can migrate you to a self-hosted WordPress.org site that you fully control.
How it all connects
Put simply, here is what happens when someone visits your site:
- They type your domain name.
- DNS looks up where that domain points, using your name servers.
- It sends the visitor to your hosting.
- Your hosting runs WordPress, which builds the page and sends it back.
flowchart TD
A[/"Visitor types your domain name"/] --> B["DNS looks up where it points, using your name servers"]
B --> C[("Hosting: where the site lives")]
C --> D["WordPress builds the page"]
D --> E[\"Page shown to the visitor"\]
classDef io fill:#0b3b2e,stroke:#34d399,stroke-width:1.5px,color:#d1fae5;
classDef process fill:#172334,stroke:#3f4a5f,color:#e2e8f0;
classDef store fill:#1e2a4a,stroke:#818cf8,color:#e0e7ff;
class A,E io;
class B,D process;
class C store;Four separate parts, often four separate logins. That is why “I can’t get into my website” can mean very different things, and why the first job in any emergency is working out which part is actually the problem.
What a developer needs to work on your site
With all that in mind, here is what usually helps a developer get started quickly:
- WordPress admin login so they can work on the site itself.
- Hosting or control-panel access so they can work at the server level, which is essential when the site is fully down.
- Domain registrar or DNS access when the problem involves email, moving hosting, or where the domain points.
You do not have to hand over passwords by email. You can share them securely, and many hosting providers let you invite someone to your account instead, so a developer may not need your login details at all. If you are not sure where any of this is, that is normal, and a good developer will happily walk you through finding it on a screen share.
A short checklist to have ready
- Who is your domain registrar (where you bought the domain), and can you log in?
- Who is your hosting provider, and can you log in?
- Can you log in to your WordPress dashboard?
- Do you know whether you are on WordPress.org or WordPress.com?
If you can answer even some of these, you are in good shape. If you cannot, do not worry. Working it out is part of the job.
If your site is down or broken right now and this all feels overwhelming, that is exactly the kind of thing I sort out. See emergency WordPress support, and I will guide you through the access side as we go.