What Nameservers Are and How to Point Your Domain to Linuxweb Print

What nameservers do

Your domain name on its own is just an entry in a registry. Nameservers are what give it meaning: they are the servers the rest of the internet consults to find out where your website lives, where your email must be delivered, and everything else attached to your domain. Whoever runs your domain's nameservers holds the master copy of its DNS records, and pointing your domain at our nameservers is what connects it to your hosting with us.

Why your nameservers are specific to you

We run multiple hosting servers, and each has its own dedicated pair of nameservers. When your account is created, it is placed on the server best suited to take it, and the nameservers for that server are listed in your welcome email. Those are your domain's nameservers, and they are not interchangeable with the pairs used by our other servers, which is exactly why we handle nameserver changes for you rather than publishing a list to copy from. Clients with their own VPS or dedicated server get nameservers dedicated to that server, listed in the welcome email in the same way.

The part you'll like: you never manage this

• New domain registered with us: the nameservers are set correctly from the moment of registration. Nothing to do.
• Domain moving to us from another provider: we update the nameservers as part of bringing you on board, whether or not the domain itself transfers to us. Nothing to do.
• Domain staying registered elsewhere: the same applies, we arrange the nameserver update during setup so your hosting works without you touching a registrar control panel.

If you ever suspect your nameservers are wrong, perhaps a very old setup, or a registrar that reset something, open a support ticket and we will check and correct them. If you prefer to make a change yourself at an outside registrar, use only the nameserver pair from your welcome email, and ask us first if you no longer have it.

What happens during a nameserver change

A nameserver change spreads across the internet over anything from minutes to 48 hours, a process called propagation, during which some visitors reach the old hosting and some the new. Nothing is deleted anywhere during this, the internet is simply told to consult a different map, so the change carries no risk to your data and is fully reversible. If your email is moving along with the domain, read our article on email problems after a nameserver or DNS change before the switch, it explains the transition window and why your mailboxes should exist on our side before the change is made.

A .co.za detail worth knowing

The ZA Central Registry, which administers .co.za domains, only accepts a nameserver change if the new nameservers already hold a DNS zone for your domain, in plain terms, your hosting account with us must exist before the nameserver change can go through. This is why hosting is set up first and the domain pointed second, and it is the cause of the confusing "not responding authoritatively" error some registrars display when the order is attempted the other way around. Since we manage the sequence for you, this is background knowledge rather than a task, but it explains why a brand-new order follows the steps it does.

Checking where a domain points

You can check any domain's current nameservers in seconds at dnschecker.org, which is also the fastest way to watch a change propagate: enter the domain, select NS, and when every location shows the new nameservers, propagation is complete.

Nameserver change versus DNS records: know which one you need

Changing nameservers hands us the whole map, every record for the domain. Sometimes that is not what is wanted: if your email must stay with another provider, or the domain carries records for third-party services, those records are recreated on our side as part of the move, tell us what the domain currently does when you order, and mention anything unusual in a support ticket so nothing is dropped. If you only need one service changed rather than everything, that is a DNS record change rather than a nameserver change, covered in our article on DNS record types in plain language.

Good to know

Because your welcome email contains your server details and nameservers, it is worth keeping, it is the one document that anchors which of our servers your account lives on. Lost it? A support ticket gets you the details again in minutes.