Affordable Web Site Design

If you currently own a website, you probably deal with one or two companies on a regular basis, your hosting company, and your domain name registrar (the company you have your domain name registered with) - for some people, these two companies are the same.

Domain Name Servers

Since it’s possible to have a domain registered with a completely different company than your website is hosted with, there has to be a way to “point” the domain name toward the server where your files are hosted. That’s exactly the purpose of the Domain Name System, a world-wide system that keeps track of where each and every registered domain name points to. Imagine the Domain Name System as a phone book…when you enter a domain name into your web browser, such as http://johncrenshaw.net, the Domain Name System looks up the unique IP address of the computer that domain name refers to. Your request is then redirected to the appropriate computer.

One of the most obvious benefits of this system is that it allows you to change the computer your website is hosted on without changing your domain name. Another benefit is that it allows for easy-to-remember website addresses; without the domain name system, in order to visit this website you’d have to type http://67.210.98.225 instead of http://johncrenshaw.net…the latter is obviously quite a bit easier to remember than the former, and the Domain Name System keeps track of this IP Address-Domain Name relationship.

Now it should make sense that in order to change hosting providers, we have to tell the domain name system which computer our website files will be hosted on. We do this by changing the Domain Name Servers for our domain name.

Changing Domain Name Servers

Although this all may sound complicated, changing domain name servers is actually pretty easy, although it may be slightly different depending on the company you have your domain name registered with. We’ll outline the steps to change domain name servers if you registered your domain through GoDaddy.com, then we’ll provide some links to instructions for changing domain name servers with other registrars.

Changing Domain Name Servers with GoDaddy

1. Visit GoDaddy.com and log into your account
2. Select the “Domains” dropdown menu item toward the top of the page
3. Select “My Domains” in that dropdown menu (this should take you to a page with a list of your domains)
4. Check the box next to the domain you want to change
5. Click the button toward the top of the page that says “Nameservers” - the button also has an image that looks a bit like a stack of gold coins (this should display some text boxes with your current name servers listed)
6. If you’re new host is not GoDaddy, check the radio button that says “Custom nameservers”
   
7. Enter the name servers as instructed by your new hosting provider. (contact your hosting provider if you’re not sure what your new nameservers are)

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