How to access your website before you change your nameservers

The Problem: If you're migrating your website from another provider, you'll probably want to test it before you go live. The act of going live involves changing your nameservers. But until you switch your nameservers the address "www.yourdomain.com" (for example) will point to your old server. This means you can't use that address to see your site on the new server until the nameserver change has completed, which will prevent you from testing.

The Solution: To see your site on the new server before the nameserver change has propagated, use this address:

http://yourusername.dns-systems.net/

..where yourusername is the username given at the top of the welcome letter which was emailed to you when you opened your hosting account. Please contact us if you have mislaid this letter.

Prior to the nameserver change, you must also use this address in your FTP client. For example, to login with FTP to the yourusername account prior to a nameserver change, enter the details into your FTP client as follows:

hostname: 	yourusername.dns-systems.net
username:	yourusername
password: 	[as provided]

Note: the password is also given at the top of the welcome letter.

Using the FTP address (example above), you can login with FTP and upload your website, and using the HTTP address (example above), you can access the website in your web browser and make sure it works properly.

Once you have it working, you can switch the nameservers. When the DNS change has propagated, you'll be able to see the site on http://www.yourdomain.com (for example) in your web browser.

Note that although changes to DNS records can take up to 48 hours to complete, there will not be a period of downtime while the changes propagate. The change will be completely transparent to your website visitors. You will of course need to ensure that the web pages themselves have been migrated correctly.