How to Recognise Hosting of a Site by Domain Address

Usually it is not complicated to find out what hosting a domain is placed on: you can just write to the site administrator. But there are cases when the administrator does not engage. If it is vital for you to know where the site is hosted, there are several ways.

WHOIS

The easiest way is to use the WHOIS service. When a domain is registered, it is submitted to the global catalog WHOIS while stating minimal information about the owner, and there you should also see the hosting as well. All domains are controlled by ICANN and you can collect this information through any search engine.

Such search engines as WHOIS are pretty numerous. Hosters tend to present them as one of the services on their sites. You can put in the domain name in the search bar – and you will get all the information you need.

WHOIS can also provide some information through an IP address. It may be defined with the help of the command bar on your computer. The command is ping – spacebar – site address that is interesting for you and you get IP – digits separated by dots.

The method does not work all the time. For example, if the data about the hosting is hidden on purpose, if it is a cloud hosting. Also, it may be difficult if the domain is taken from one provider and hosting is used from another one.

For most of the projects at a regular virtual hosting this way is very suitable but if it does not work, there are other ways to find out where the site is hosted.

By address

Utilities that allow definition of the IP address and address like dig, nslookup or host for the UNIX system refer to the system of the name servers DNS. You need to enter your address, choose an address and it will include the hosting. It may be defined by the name of the server that is provided in the information.

This method is handy but it may not work either. In some circumstances the name of the server will not be shown in the address.

By MX record

It comes to the search of a hosting through an email server used by the site. To do this, you will have to choose MX record and run the search in the same utility. You will get a list of email IP addresses that will be connected with the main address of the site.

The digits you receive will have to be copied without the digit 10 at the beginning and the symbol “.” at the end. The you have to insert the copied number in the search bar and choose the address record. You will get the IP of the email server that you may use on WHOIS.

By IP

For this way you will have to copy the IP address received in the previous way from the address record. You have to insert it to the bar of any WHOIS service and you are likely to get the name of the hosting provider.

WPBeginner WordPress Theme Detector

It is an online checker that helps you to find out what theme of Wordpress is used on the site and if it used at all. However, it also shows the address of the hosting. It is very simple to use – you can put the address of the site in the search bar.

Error pages

It is a rather unexpected way to understand where the site is hosted. Error 404 occurs when the user requested a page which does not exist on the site. Usually the site has to redirect them to the page with apologies and an offer to take a look at something else. This page should be created in advance and set a redirect to it.

But even small projects usually do not have their own 404 page and instead of it you can bump into the page of the hosting. Unfortunately, this way does not work in most cases: the project may have their own error pages, the site may hide the error page, or a small hosting provider may not have an error page.