Ok, i'm going to just lay this all out as it's fresh in my head having bounced back-and-forth between various technical support lines the past few days. I'm doing some freelance web design work for a small business in the service industry. I am relatively new this field and have about a year's worth of experience outside of my schooling.

The company is based in Canada and the .ca domain name was registered with the company which hosts the site as well(Primus). Largely based on the fact that server uptime has been an issue recently, my employer has decided to go with GoDaddy's hosting services.

He has a Deluxe Linux hosting account with GoDaddy, and all files related to the site are now in place. Okay!

WHAT I WANT TO DO :

1 - Mail Hosting will remain with Primus.
2 - When companyname.ca is entered, the user will be sent to the GoDaddy servers instead of Primus.

I also have all information required to login to both the GoDaddy and Primus user Control Panels to change any required info.


I thought it was just a matter of modifying existing primary and secondary DNS address entries, but I am not given the option to do so from Primus' control panel. I CAN add new ones, but the old ones remain (and incidentally, they too are .ca names) so i'm left with 5 DNS servers instead of the 2 new ones I want to appear. Also, now in the GoDaddy Control Panel, just beneath the DNS server addresses is an entry that says 'A' Record followed by an IP address. As I understand it, this is the IP address of my GoDaddy webspace. So, assuming this I altered 3 other entries in the Primus control panel : www, ftp, and companyname.ca

Lastly, I modified the DNS registration information to reflect the new DNS servers with GoDaddy.

Now for the weird part...about 5 minutes after the changes were submitted, everything looked to be working. This surprised me as a few people had mentionned that the changes could take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to take effect...not less than 5 minutes. I was presented with the right info, even submitted a form and browsed around the new site a bit. Add a fist pump and cry of victory to that and I was a happy camper.

I get a panicked call about 6 hours later saying the site is down, and sure enough it was. I have no idea why. I've been told many things, items worth note :

- as the changes made in the Primus control panel propagated, as the site appeared live but when all was said and done, it was dead.

- There is a law saying that .ca addresses can only be purchased from a registrar with some sort of business basis in Canada [which GoDaddy can't say it has apparently] Not sure how this applies to what i'm talking of here...



Anyways, since then I have backtracked and I am trying to go back to the old site. I removed the two new Godaddy DNS addresses [leaving the 3 primus ones that were there the whole ]and also re-entered the original www, ftp, and <companyname>.ca 'A' Record addresses.

As of this posting, the old site hasn't come back up yet [it's been about 45 minutes]. I need helllllp. One would think that if you 'reset to default' then everything should be as it was. Any input would be appreciated greatly. I wish that I could just transfer the damn domain name. I reckon ICANN doesn't think that's a good idea.

Thank you in advance,

duder78

I am relatively new this field and have about a year's worth of experience outside of my schooling.

my employer has decided to go with GoDaddy's hosting services.
Not meant to be rude, but your employer has made some serious mistake about his own BUSINESS website:

a) he should NOT have made a decision to switch hosts WHEN he doesn't even have the slightest idea of what it means; and

b) not only that, but he basically put you (an amateur in domain names and web hosting) in a difficult position to take care of something which is CLEARLY BEYOND your knowledge and experience.

My advice would be: tell your boss to HIRE (like by actually PAYING) a professional (i.e. someone WHO KNOWS answers to your questions). The money he "saved" by not doing so is actually spent in terms of his company's reputation.

I'm in complete agreement with the above statements. Even more so after waddling into these muddy waters without an adequate understanding.

This didn't seem overly complicated when I looked into it initially. I was told by each hosting providers' technical support agents that in order to send internet traffic for newhostingsite.ca(currently hosted by Primus) over to GoDaddy, simply change the primary and secondary DNS entries used by Primus to reflect the GoDaddy DNS servers..making sure to change same entries for domains' registration records as well. Afterwards, change the www, ftp, and companyname.ca entries for already-existing A-record, then let the changes propagate.

I have a few image snapshots of both Primus and GoDaddy account screens for anyone looking to help out a domain transferring n00b. Hey, assume downtime isn't an issue!

elgrantos.com/temp/images/primushostinfo.jpg
elgrantos.com/temp/images/gdhostinfo.jpg

You can change the nameservers of your newhostingsite.ca to godaddy and then setup a MX entry to link back to the Primus account.

You could also just put a redirect if your really having trouble.

Is there any reason why you want to keep the email on the primus server?

P.S. You can host .ca domains on US servers you just can't purchase them from US only companies.

I opted to just setup the sites on the Primus hosting space and let my my employer know that it is something he will want to look into further. Nameslave is right. I am being paid to design the websites, not to transfer hosting services.

The rates are alot more affordable at GoDaddy as well so that had alot to do with the hosting transfer talk.

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Is there any reason why you want to keep the email on the primus server?


Nothing other than the fact that he's used their email services since day one and is used to using their interface. I think that ideally he would have all three domain names (two of which are .ca) pointing to his one GoDaddy hosting account. After this I reckon email could be setup for the other two (.ca) sites as well.


Can anyone recommend some companies who offer transferring services? I would like to forward a brief list to my employer.

Just change your primary and secondary nameservers to godaddy and contact primus asking that you just want to use their email hosting so what settings you should do in your domain record. You will just have to update your domain's MX and A records. Primus will send you their IP address.