WHOIS

It literally means “who is”. Go to whois.com.au for .com.au and .au domains, or who.is for .com, type in the domain, and you’ll see which registrar it’s registered with. That’s where you log in to manage DNS, renewals, and ownership.

Privacy rules hide most personal details these days, so you won’t see much about the owner. The registrar name is usually what you’re after anyway.

When you’d use it: a designer or old IT person set everything up years ago, and now nobody remembers where the domain lives. This is the first thing I check when untangling a client’s setup — half the battle is finding the right login.