Hi,
I have a client with a domain name registered with a Portugues name registrar. He wants me to host his website on my hosting service where I host about 15 other sites. I don't speak Portugese but I'm able to log in to the control panel where I can see his name servers and I can change them, however when I change them to match or point to my nameservers it doesn't work. I've set up his account on my servers and all that seems to work fine but I can't FTP files or point his nameservers to mine.

Any ideas on this would be most helpful.

I look forward to any assistance.

Regards,
Russtyfox

Hi Rusty

When you redelegate a domain name the change may not take effect immediately.

This is because ISPs cache DNS records in accord with the TTL that is set in the DNS zone file.

So depending on the TTL setting and your ISP it could take up to 24 hours before the changes take effect for you.

Thanks Mike,
So, if I change the nameservers at his registrant's nameserver control panel to my nameserver ns1.mynameserver.com, your saying it could take 24 hours before it activates?

the name change should stick in the control panel immediately but it may take 24 hours for the domain name to show the correct/updated page.

I've set it up so it's parked on top of an existing domain, therefore when the nameservers finally resolve, it should resolve to the domain i've parked it on top of?

Yes, that's right.

ok, i've made the change, I guess I'll just have to be patient and see if it worked. Thanks for the time.

Regards,
Russty

Hi Mike,
Yep, you were quite right and that worked fine. A whois search reveals the nameservers are now pointing to my servers.

Now I need to setup the files on my server. However although I can create a new account on my server's WHM (with FTP capabilities etc), I can't seem to open the site or it's folders in FTP using either Filezilla or FTP Commander. To get around the FTP problem, I terminated the account and tried parking it on it's .net equivalent (which I do own).

I'm using WHM 11.24.2 and Control Panel.

Any ideas where I might be missing something?

I look forward to a response of any sort.

Kind regards,

It's a bit hard to tell.

Can you connect via FTP if you use the IP address of your server?

haven't tried that. I'll give it a go.

An ftp site opens when I use the IP address of the server as you recommend. I can post the html files to the public folder however, the website doesn't appear when I point the browser to the address. I've deleted the account again and have parked it for the time being. That doesn't work either. Perhaps it needs time to resolve dbs? I'll try again later.

Thanks again
Regards,
Russty.

G'day Russty,
Just a couple of basic checks. (1) The file to be accessed by people browsing is index.html, etc. and (2) it is all in lower case and properly formatted.

If it's a cPanel server you should be able to view the site using http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/~username/ where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of the server and username is the cPanel account username.

If you can FTP using the IP and view the site using the IP - it's definitely a DNS issue.

Yes, it is indeed index.html and is all lower case etc. However, I've terminated the account so I could park it on top of it's dot.net equivalent. But that doesn't work either. Although I can navigate directly to the dot.net's index.html page.

I double checked the nameservers and noticed they were in a different order/sequence so I switched them back to what I thought they should be. Waiting now to see if they resolve in the correct order. Maybe that was the problem?