Utilizing an abandoned hosting

[bradex]

I am an amateur and a newbie to website management. I am currently managing a website for a small organization to which I belong. It would be very helpful if somebody could help me with the following doubts...

The situation: Our organization bought a domain (say domain1) and a hosting (say hosting1) through a person (say Mr. X) initially. He had bought the domain from godaddy, but we do not know the details of the hosting provider. However, as his service was unsatisfactory, we personally bought another domain (say domain2) and a wordpress hosting (say hosting2) (both from godaddy) and created a website ourselves. Then, we terminated the contract with Mr. X and took charge of domain1 and hosting1 from them. We redirected the old domain (domain1) to the new domain (domain2) and our website is functioning well. We are left with the hosting1 we got from Mr. X, which is still active. I have the cpanel login details for this hosting.

Now, these are my doubts:

1) I do not know what is the hosting company for the cPanel. whoishostingthis.com tells me the current hosting provider, but not the earlier hosting provider. How can I find the details of the hosting provider for hosting1 (just curious)?
2) The cPanel of hosting1 still has the details of the domain1 (which we have acquired and redirected). So, whenever I try to reinstall wordpress, it gets installed with the old domain (domain1) details. How can I remove the old domain details? I am asking this because under 'domain' section in my cpanel, I see addon domains, subdomains, aliases, redirects, advanced zone editor. I see no 'domain' as such which can be deleted/removed.
3) After removing the old domain (domain1) from hosting1, I want to install wordpress in hosting1 and would like to do some tinkering so that I can learn more about wordpress. But, is it possible to install wordpress in cPanel without a domain?

[TheGAME1264]

You probably won't get a lot of answers to your questions. They're not bad questions, but they're quite tangled. I'll take a crack at it, but I'm not certain I'm going to be of much help here.

1) There may be another way to get at this information and save money. Unfortunately, I don't know what it is.

WebDesignForums.net WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools <-- replace webdesignforums.net with your domain name.

Once you do that, you'll see a Hosting History section. You'd have to click through and sign up at a rate of $99/month to find out. If this is just to satisfy curiosity, I wouldn't bother. If you're worried about potential damage from a bad host (e.g. damage from downtime associated with the host), it might be worth the coin. That's up to you.

There's also this, although it would take some additional research to figure out who the host is from the nameservers (something that isn't always available): The good news is that it's free.

Domain history checker

2) That depends on your definition of "redirected". If you're 301 redirecting domain1 to domain2, it really doesn't matter what you do with the cPanel for domain1. Everything will be associated with domain2, so there's no point installing anything on domain1. Personally, I'd suggest getting a prorated refund from Mr. X, as is standard practice with unused hosting for a term longer than a month.

If you mean something else, you'll have to elaborate a bit more.

3) You could, although you'd have to have a dedicated IP address or alternative domain associated with hosting1 in order to see it. If it's a shared IP, you'd have to go with a domain.

If you really want to learn about WP, you don't have to pay for it. Get a subdomain on WordPress.com and muck about with it for free.

https://wordpress.com/#plans

[bradex]

Sorry, for not being that clear and thanks for your helpful answers!

1) I managed to find the earlier hosting provider from the nameservers. Your suggestion using 'domain history' was also a good one.

2) I could understand that once the 'redirect' is done for domain1, hosting 1 has nothing to do with domain1. What i want is to delete the old domain1 details from hosting1 and add a new domain. I don't see how to do it in cPanel. There seems to be no option under 'domain' for that (screenshot attached). Capture.jpg

3) I am not able to clearly understand what you said, but it seems that I cannot install wordpress in hosting1 after I remove domain1 without adding a new domain. Is that so?

Mr. X gave me an IP address, nameservers, and cPanel login details. But, I think after redirecting domain1, the IP address would serve no purpose.

wordpress.org is more fun than wordpress.com with those wonderful plugins!

[TheGAME1264]

You may have root access depending on your hosting plan. If you do, you can add the domain in by creating a new account.

If not, someone else would have to answer that. I've only ever used Linux hosting plans with root access.

You could in theory use the IP address as a test bed for WordPress. You would set it up as http://(IP Address) instead of http://(domain1). Again, though, it would have be a dedicated IP. No one else would be able to use it for this to work.