IvyCat Website Services » domains

Change Domain Nameservers at GoDaddy

Eric — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:21:27 +0000

When you register a new domain at GoDaddy, your domain nameservers are set to GoDaddy parking pages by default. To point your domain to your new hosting account, you’ll need to change your domain’s nameservers.

To Set Your Domain’s Nameservers at GoDaddy:

Login to your GoDaddy Account Manager.
Browse to the My Products section and select Domain Manager.
Check the domain name(s) you want to modify.
Click on Nameservers.
Select Custom Nameservers if your domain is hosted at IvyCat, or another non-GoDaddy host.
Click OK.
Click Set Nameservers

What Are Domain Nameservers?

Eric — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:53:28 +0000

When you set nameservers for a domain, you’re simply pointing your domain to the web server(s) responsible for directing your domain’s traffic. These nameservers provide DNS services, which basically tell the Internet which server(s) are responsible for your domain’s web traffic, e-mail, FTP, sub-domains, etc.

When you purchase a domain and hosting, you’ll usually have to change your domain’s nameservers to point to your hosting account. Advanced users sometimes even prefer to use a third party service to host their DNS, such as their domain registrar, or another DNS service.

Note: If you’re hosting with IvyCat, you’ll receive instructions for setting your domain nameservers in your Welcome E-mail.

More Information:

Nameservers: technical explanation of Nameservers on Wikipedia.
DNS: technical explanation of the Domain Name System on Wikipedia..

How to Transfer Your Site to IvyCat

Eric — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:19:23 +0000

To transfer your site to IvyCat, please do the following:

Select and purchase a hosting package from our Secure Ordering Page.
Make sure to enter a valid, existing email address when you sign up - not one using the domain we’ll be hosting. Once payment is received and your account is activated, you’ll receive a welcome email with a username and password.
Backup your existing site and files at your existing host. Often hosts backup sites regularly, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Upload your files to your new hosting account using the FTP information in the welcome email.
If you need help moving your site, log into the Helpdesk using the username and password in your welcome email, and submit a Support ticket with Site Transfer in the category field. Enter the login details and server information for your existing web hosting account.

We’ll communicate with you regarding the site move through this ticket, and will let you know when the transfer is complete. If your existing account uses cPanel, we can usually transfer all of your files for you.
Setup your email accounts by logging into your cPanel. See the Knowledgebase for more information. Make sure to setup an email account on the new server for each existing email address before moving on.
If possible, request that your existing host changes your TTL (time to live) settings for your site to 600 seconds. By default, these settings are usually 14,400 seconds, which equals 4 hours. This means that DNS servers around the Net will refresh the record every 4 hours. To ensure a quicker switch, request that your host make (and confirm) this change 24 – 48 hours before you take step 6 below.
Setup your domain nameservers. If you already have a domain name, you’ll need to either set the nameservers as listed in your welcome email, or transfer your domain to our registrar using the Domain Management Page, and we can switch the nameservers for you.

Once you’ve made the nameserver change, it can take 2 – 48 hours for these changes to ‘propagate’ throughout the Internet. In the meantime, some traffic may be directed to both the old and new server.

Note: If you lowered your TTL settings in step 5, domain propagation should be much quicker.

If you have any questions about your transfer, please open a support ticket in the Helpdesk.