I have just discovered you and now following you on Twitter.

Great post, I had no idea about this problem with the DNS. But unfortunately your solution drescription is too technical for me, I don’t understand it. I have no idea what “A record” or what “nslookup” is or how to find it or use it.

I am just about to change webhosts from myjunkhost to mynewgoodrack. But I have not found “mynewgoodrack” yet.

I am looking for a webhost and web account that does not constantly return “500 Internal Server Error” for my WordPress sites every time their server gets busy. I would like a dedicated server as I am intending to host my own autoresponder (which almost everybody recommends me not to do) but can not spend that much money yet so I am intending on taking out a reseller account but then using only for my own domains (not reselling) to hopefully increase both my disk space and my bandwidth (but I am concerned about percentage of CPU limits). I am confused about VPS. I don’t really understand what a “virtual private server” really is or what benefits it has over a reseller account.

Clearly you would understand this stuff a whole lot better than me.

Would you have any recommendations for which type of hosting account I would be better to us?

Do you have any recommendations for hosting companies?

I am very confused!

I would be very grateful for any recommendations you may have!

Wayne.

First, get your existing domain’s information from the host’s nameservers. You need the IP information for the A records, the CNAME records, etc. Basically you want to know everything on your domain’s nameserver space. You can get this yourself with nslookup if you want. Here’s an example of my DNS records (this doesn’t include CNAME subdomains, you’ll have to query for them individually):

C:\>nslookup
Default Server:  dns.example.com
Address:  111.222.333.444

> set type=any
> ottodestruct.com
Server:  dns.example.com
Address:  111.222.333.444

Non-authoritative answer:
ottodestruct.com
        primary name server = ns01.domaincontrol.com
        responsible mail addr = dns.jomax.net
        serial  = 2010022500
        refresh = 28800 (8 hours)
        retry   = 7200 (2 hours)
        expire  = 604800 (7 days)
        default TTL = 86400 (1 day)
ottodestruct.com        internet address = 64.202.163.10
ottodestruct.com        nameserver = ns02.domaincontrol.com
ottodestruct.com        MX preference = 30, mail exchanger = ALT2.aspmx.l.google.com
ottodestruct.com        MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = ALT1.aspmx.l.google.com
ottodestruct.com        text =
        "v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com -all"
ottodestruct.com        MX preference = 40, mail exchanger = ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.com
ottodestruct.com        nameserver = ns01.domaincontrol.com
ottodestruct.com        MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = aspmx.l.google.com
ottodestruct.com        MX preference = 50, mail exchanger = ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.com

(As you can see, I use Google Apps on my domain.)

Next, you go to your host (GoDaddy) and go to Manage Domains, then go to Total DNS Control. This *should* be available even though you have your nameservers pointing elsewhere. Don’t quote me on that though.

Using this, you set up your settings to match the existing one you have on the webhosts nameserver. That way, during the transfer, you lose nothing and no traffic. Both your old and new nameservers will basically serve up the same information.

After you’ve done thing, you change your nameservers for the domain to point back to GoDaddy’s servers. Mine are “NS01.DOMAINCONTROL.COM” and “NS02.DOMAINCONTROL.COM” on my GoDaddy domains, because that was what they defaulted to when I created the domains. I do not know if this is universal across their domains by default. Their help documentation says to use ns25 and ns26: http://help.godaddy.com/article/664 . You may want to ask them before changing.

Anyway, once you’ve changed nameservers, you wait for a couple weeks. Ideally, you lose no traffic in this time, because again, both your old and new nameservers say the same things. And now, when you’re wanting to change hosts next time, you can do it yourself just by editing your DNS settings and not by repointing your domain’s nameservers.

http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/global-outage-cooling-failure-and-dns/