Document a local business website by creating one controlled register for domain ownership, registrar, DNS, hosting, content management, certificates, forms, email routing, analytics, search tools, integrations, backups, billing, and vendor contacts. For each item, record the accountable owner, current setting, business reason, access route, renewal, dependencies, test evidence, and change history. Store credentials in an approved secret manager, never in the register.
Separate business ownership from technical access
Name the business role authorized to make website decisions, the domain registrant, registrar account owner, DNS administrator, hosting owner, content publisher, analytics owner, form destination owner, and billing contact. Record at least one authorized recovery path and a backup role. A contractor with login access is not automatically the owner of the domain or business content.
ICANN's information for domain registrants explains that a registrant contracts with a registrar and manages domain settings through that registrar. The page also points registrants to information about registration, transfer, renewal, and restoration. Record the registrar, registrant identity, expiration, renewal method, transfer restrictions, and recovery contact as distinct fields.
Inventory settings by layer
For the domain and DNS layer, list nameservers, important records, mail dependencies, certificate validation, redirects, and verification records. For hosting and publishing, list environments, deployment source, runtime, storage, backup, restore procedure, scheduled jobs, and rollback. For the public experience, record navigation, legal pages, contact destinations, accessibility checks, analytics, and third-party scripts.
Document a setting as a text value or structured export when safe, plus a link to its live location. Do not copy private keys, API secrets, mailbox passwords, or payment details. A screenshot can support the record but should not be the only evidence because it may hide scope and cannot be reliably compared.
Track verification and search ownership
Google's Search Console permissions guidance distinguishes verified owners, delegated owners, full users, restricted users, and associates. Verified ownership can depend on a token such as a file or tag. Record every verification method and token location so removing a former user includes removing persistent ownership evidence where appropriate.
The Search Console property settings guide identifies settings for ownership verification, users and permissions, associations, change of address, exports, robots information, and crawl statistics. Include connected analytics, merchant, advertising, tag-management, and business-profile accounts in the dependency map, even when another vendor owns the interface.
Keep a decision and change log
For each meaningful change, capture the request, reason, approver, affected layer, old value, new value, timestamp, precheck, test result, rollback, and follow-up owner. Examples include a DNS change, form destination update, analytics tag replacement, content-management upgrade, or redirect rule.
Use a maintenance calendar for domain renewal, certificate review, plugin or dependency updates, backup restore drills, form tests, access reviews, policy reviews, and vendor renewals. Assign a role and escalation path to every recurring check.
Test recovery and handoff
Ask an authorized backup administrator to locate the registrar, confirm domain renewal status, find DNS and hosting owners, restore a nonproduction backup, submit a non-sensitive test form, identify verification tokens, and find the rollback plan. Do not change ownership, DNS, payments, or production permissions just to prove the document exists.
The record is useful when a new authorized owner can distinguish business authority from vendor access, recover the site, explain its settings, and make a controlled change. Review it after staffing, vendor, domain, hosting, or integration changes and mark unverified fields as unknown instead of guessing.
Sources
- Information for Domain Name Registrants — ICANN
- Managing owners, users, and permissions — Google Search Console Help
- Search Console Property Settings page — Google Search Console Help