OK, so you have a brand new website made by a super cool company called Luminus Media. What now? Well, if you are hosting with this super cool company, it’s now time to point to domain to our servers. There’s two ways this happens:
- Change Name Servers: This is like hiring a new general manager. It moves ALL domain control to the new server.
- Change A Record IP: This is like hiring a new department manager. It only points the part of the domain that you specify. Mainly used for pointing the domain to one location for the website and another for a large email hosting service.
Well we know the gameplan now, so what’s next. Either your domain manager or web company (with login access to your account) will execute one of the above tasks to point your domain to the website hosting server. They will tell you immediately that it has been done.
Here is the fun part that web providers as well as website owners hate, but it needs to be clarified (excuse the following capslock)….
****** DOMAIN NAME CHANGES MAY TAKE 5 MINUTES TO 48 HOURS ******
This commonly takes more in the 5 minutes – 2 hours range, but cannot be predicted as such.
This is NOT something controlled by any DNS provider or web company. It is a combination of a few factors controlled by:
- The ICANN domain registry reporting the change
- Regional ISPs (Internet Service Providers) updating their records to display to clients
Think of the old elementary game “telephone” only the story doesn’t change. The 2nd person in the circle may already know the story, but because of the number of participants you must wait untilt he story reaches you as well. By the end, everybody knows the story (in this version, the correct story).
Has the website been updated successfully and you can’t see it yet yourself? Try these steps:
- Clear your browser’s cache: Browsers store information to speed up page loading time, this includes your old website’s data.
- Reboot your computer: Computers store caches as well.
- Try a different browser: If you are having cache issues this is a quick way to test that.
- Reboot your internal company server: For larger companies, internal servers have caches to speed up performance. This can also lead to a delayed visibility of new domain settings. Ask your IT professional to help with this.
Switching domain settings is very easy, waiting is very difficult. Your DNS or web provider cannot estimate this change for you, they can simply make the change.
Be patient, the world will be right once again soon.