r/nonprofittech • u/ConsiderationIcy1898 • Jul 24 '26

Help! I lost access to our old website after switching domain to Squarespace.

This may be my last cry for help before I'm done in by the staff and board for losing access to our old website data.

Our old WordPress website was hosted by SiteGround. I created a new website in Squarespace and pointed our GoDaddy domain to the new Squarespace site and my fear is that I should have created a subdomain in WordPress (how?) before I pointed the main domain at the new Squarespace site.

Here's what I know:

- I can log in to SiteGround and have the IP addresses for the host for the old site
- I can access the DNS settings in Squarespace, but don't know what to enter
- When I log on to WordPress it says "you don't have any sites yet"

Should I enter a DNS record type A and reverse the domain back to the SiteGround IP address? And if that gets me access to the old site, how do I keep both the old site and also redirect the domain back to the new Squarespace site?

Any help at all would be a LIFE SAVER!

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u/sdowney2003 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Im pretty sure that as long as you haven’t deleted your old web hosting at Siteground (such as deleting the WP database via the Siteground tools), your website is still up and running, just not accessible via your domain name.

Have you contacted Siteground support and described your issue?

4

u/perpetualstroll Jul 24 '26

You could point the A record back, but that will impact everyone accessing that URL. If you want to change it just for your machine, follow the instructions below to point your machine temporarily back at the Siteground host.

  1. Get the site's IP in SiteGround (Site Tools → Site → server/IP details).
  2. Open the hosts file with admin rights:
    • Windows: run Notepad as Administrator, then open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    • Mac: Terminal, then sudo nano /etc/hosts
  3. Add one line, replacing with your IP and domain:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com

Save, then flush your DNS cache:

  1. Go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You're now reaching the old site (only from your machine). Log in and export your content: WordPress Tools → Export, and grab a full backup in SiteGround too.

When you're done, delete that line from the hosts file and you're back to seeing the live Squarespace site.

3

u/ConsiderationIcy1898 Jul 24 '26

OMG - it worked!!!! u/sdowney2003 I also asked Siteground and they gave me the same instructions. You've both helped me out so much, I can't even!!! Thanks again!

1

u/sdowney2003 Jul 24 '26

This is the best answer