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Domain names come and go every day. New people are starting out on the web, others have let their domain names expire and some may just be changing to new domain names.

 

When a domain name is expired, it becomes available for others to use. If it was a popular name it may be auctioned off with the name going to the highest bidder. Some people just change their domain name for no other reason than looking for a change.

 

Changing your domain name requires two important steps. The first step is to get rid of (also known as releasing) your old domain name and the second step is to get a new one. While this may sound easy enough it doesn’t always go as smoothly or as quickly as you’d like it to. Although they have your new domain name and address, it may actually take a while for all the traffic to be transferred to the new address. But why are there any difficulties with changing your domain name?

 

The main reason why you may have trouble is that it’s not just a case of changing your domain name. Your name change involves thousands of other DNS servers around the world that need to be notified of your new domain name. The DNS servers are going to be extremely busy for a while as it is their job to link domain names with IP addresses.

 

Another fact that may complicate your domain name change and give the DNS server more work is that one IP address may be linked to more than one domain name and one domain name may be linked to more than one IP address.

 

DNS servers all over the globe have internal databases they use to match IP addresses to domain names, but they don’t have all the IP address and domain name combinations. So the chances of you getting the same IP address that belonged to your old domain name are very slim. This may lead to some confusion at first, so if you are thinking of changing your domain name, put the advertising on hold until your site and new domain name has been throughly established and clients start finding you. You do not want to advertise only to have them directed to your ‘old address’!

 

Changing domain names will place your website to be in a sort of limbo for a while but with a good web host and some common sense the downtime should be minimal.

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