Domain Propagation antics

Many support requests that we receive at the Help Desk is about domain propagation or folks not being able to view their newly created sites. This article will go about trying to explain what is happening and why you can't view your new site whereas someone else can view your site.

Your site will not become visible by the domain name for probably 48 hours. Why is this taking so long, you ask? There are various reasons, but some studies have suggested that there are literally millions of DNS Servers that need to be notified of the new information!

Propagation takes two forms, changes to your DNS Zone and changes to your WHOIS information. The WHOIS is the master record that tells every DNS Server in the world which is the authoritative server for your domain. A change to your WHOIS information (done my your domain registrar) can take up to 72 hours to propagate fully. A change to your DNS Zone information typically affects only a handful of servers, and so is done much more quickly.