Thanks Alminc!

Your host should have some tutrorials, forums, knowledgebase articles posted, use them. That is enough for you to deal with a web site management.

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Great overview. I wonder what you mean by this? Are you suggesting get a domain name JohnDoeHosting.com?

Thanks for the excellent tutorial... very helpful!
Also, why should I avoid Godaddy for domain registration?

AnarchyAds,

Nice tutorial, except your description of how DNS records "propagate" is not correct.

When you register a new domain, the registration is sent (registered) on the global servers for that top level domain (.COM, or .NET, etc). Those servers now have in their database the Names and IP Addresses of what DNS Servers are authoritative (have the info) for the domain, based on the information you provided during the registration process.

The information does NOT propagate anywhere else.

When a query for DNS resolution (the process of getting an IP address by supplying a DNS name) is sent from a client to a DNS server, that DNS server makes several requests on behalf of the client to determine the IP address. Let's say the host name is www . mydomain . com

1. Every DNS server in the world, if configured properly, knows who the ROOT name servers are (.) If it was just turned on, it asks the root name servers who is the authoritative source of .COM. It then caches that information so that next time it does not have to talk to the root name servers for anything .COM.
2. It next asks the .COM servers who is authoritative for MYDOMAIN . COM and caches this information also, so that in the future for anything in the .MYDOMAIN . COM domain hierarchy, it no longer needs to talk to the .COM name servers
3. It finally talks to the DNS servers for mydomain . com and asks what the IP address of www is. It then also caches this information.

Now, if the owner of mydomain.com changes the IP address of www . mydomain . com or changes the DNS servers for the domain, the DNS server in the above example will have "old" information in its cache, so for some time, anyone who talks to this name server will get the "old" information.

This is where the Time To Live (TTL) setting for your domain records comes in. The authoritative DNS server for the domain will send along with the IP address a TTL for the record. This specifies how long the DNS server can keep this information in its cache before having to go ask for the information again.

Managing the TTL value for your domain and/or specific records allows you to ensure any changes you make will take effect in the desired amount of time. Of course, you want to be reasonable. Caching is the only reason the entire DNS system works, so you don't want to go crazy and set this value to a few seconds or you will overwhelm the DNS server with requests. Caching is a GOOD thing! Caching improves performance because it minimizes the amount of time it takes to resolve a name and distributes the load on DNS servers.

Some registrars will let you manage your own TTL values for your domains, others will not, so you will want to find out what the default TTL is for your DNS provider (in the case of your recommendation, Hostgator). I use namecheap.com for all my domain registrations. They don't let me manage my own TTL values, but their default TTL is 4 hours, which I think is reasonable.

Anyway, even the TTL value is irrelevant for new domains as you register a new one and then move it from your registrar's servers to your hosting provider. As long as you never try and resolve any names from that domain (ping, etc) until the DNS records are fully configured, then no DNS servers will cache wrong information.

If your domain was being used already and had a significant amount of traffic, lots of DNS servers would have this info cached. Any server that did not have the info cached would request live info and get the correct IP immediately.

If you are planning a site move or DNS changes for a live site, you will definitely want to consider the TTL for your domain and records and account for this in your plan. The best possible scenario is if you can manage your own TTL values. A certain time before you plan to make the change, just change this value to a very low time, then wait for all the old value to expire, then make your changes, and finally bump this value up again.

The registrar updates to the TLD servers happen very quickly because they happen through special APIs that registrars use to talk to those servers.

I hope this helps clarify how DNS works at a high level for those that are interested.

Wil