Turn off/Shut down site, retain email addresses

Hi.

I know very little about cPanel and web management. I have two websites/domains which are managed through cPanel. My issue is working out how to shut down one or both of these websites while retaining my email addresses for these domains. I'm pretty sure I created both email addresses through cPanel. (I intend to keep these domains.)

I've had both websites for many years, somehow learnt enough to get by when I started, with occasional big help from a software engineer. One website is now clearly a problem as I can see that the forum was recently hacked and it appears that the site may be sending out emails as I received an auto-reply from someone the other day. On the problem website, I have a phpBB forum and a Wordpress page. Neither the phpBB or the Wordpress page have been in active operation for a few years and neither have had program updates. (The other website is Wordpress-based, also not actively operating - it's visible, but I'm not updating content - and could also be taken down if needed at this point in time, though perhaps just a program update is all that's needed for that. There's not much on it, so I'm not that fussed with what happens to it.)

As a 'wish', it would be great if I could keep a copy of the forum somehow, but I'm guessing that would be full of viral junk now and might not be the best idea. That would just be to keep a record of various activities I did on there - somewhat sentimental reasons, but also a record for professional purposes. Probably not that big a deal if it disappears into the ether.

I've had a quick look online about how to temporarily or permanently take down websites, but everything seems rather complicated and assumes prior knowledge of one thing or another that I don't have. If there's an easy step-by-step somewhere, that would be awesome. If this seems like something I should try to get someone more experienced to do, if someone can point me in the right direction to find someone that isn't going to cost a packet, that would also be great.

Thanks for reading, if you've got to the end!

 

Hi Tony.

This advice sounds smart and simple.

I haven't had a proper read through the forum for years. It's just been nice to know that it's there and I did something that actually worked really well for a while. (Got sick for a bit and let the whole thing go.) So, yeah, that's the 6 month test already done.

Good advice in saying to just keep websites that I'm actually going to use and maintain too. I don't think I really understood how domain ownership works for a while. And I've now learnt my lesson about doing program updates!

Thanks for the advice!