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I realise that to most people reading this I'm asking a basic question, and I'm really asking it for my peace of mind as this is the first time I have attempted to point a domain name elsewhere. I have a domain name pointing at my clients old website which I want to point to his new website on my server. I have changed the nameservers to point at the webhost's nameservers and I think this is all I need to do. My question: Do I just need to wait the upto 72 hours and the new website will display as if by magic or I have I missed something vital? Like I said, basic question, but it is my first domain repoint and I would prefer that it went without a hitch! Thanks

PS. I hope this is in the right forum, I followed a similar-ish question from stack-overflow

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Yep, this is a worry I've had in the past too.

I moved from hosting on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET to a Linode VPS a few months back. All I did was change the DNS A record to be my server's IP address and make sure there was a Virtual Host set up in Apache (in my case, if you're doing things that way) to handle the site. It didn't take nearly 72 hours for my DNS to change, it was more like 1.

Disclaimer? I'm fairly new to this too, but I think that's all you need.

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Afraid I'm even newer at this! Been creating websites for years as a part of a large team so never really had to think about this "stuff" before. So sorry to be dumb... When you say virtual host you mean...? :) – Andrew Apr 13 '11 at 16:34
No worries, I'm the same. If you do what TheCompWhiz says and edit your hosts file to point to the new IP address, you'll be able to check that the server's configured properly. If not, more needs to be done... – alexmuller Apr 13 '11 at 21:38
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Just for a quick & dirty check (which you could have done before the DNS records where changed) you can setup an entry in your local hosts (/etc/hosts in linux and c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in windows) file with the IP of the new provider and browse to it. If it lands in the right spot and everything appears correctly... you can be pretty confident that the DNS migration will take place very smoothly.

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I think you mean on the existing website? If so I don't have access to that – Andrew Apr 13 '11 at 16:34
Nope. You can technically setup your own host file to resolve any name to any IP on your workstation. Once you have the new host configured... add an entry in your host file to point to the new ip adddress for that domain, and fire open a web-browser. You'll immediately be connected to the new-host instead of where DNS would direct you. After you have verified that the host appears OK... throw the switch on your DNS server & let the rest of the world resolve the correct IP. – TheCompWiz Apr 13 '11 at 17:47
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