What happens when we update a domain?

Any time a website needs to be moved to a new hosting company, once it's been uploaded to the new account, the domain name needs to be updated. The nameservers must be updated to use the new hosting server's nameservers.

Nameservers, at a basic level, store domain names and provide the corresponding IP Address for the actual site's hosted files. So, when you attempt to visit a website like StadiaStudio.com, your browser instantly looks at the domain name registration for StadiaStudio.com and contacts the registrar. The registrar provides nameservers of NS1.STADIASTUDIO.COM and NS2.STADIASTUDIO.COM. Your browser then connects with those nameservers and receives the physical location for the website's files and folders.

In order to save time and deliver websites faster, individual Internet Service Providers (ISP) store domain name information and skip the first couple steps of the above process. Since sites move around all the time, ISPs regularly update their domain name information, or cache, though the frequency of updates will vary from ISP to ISP.

So, when a domain name's nameservers are changed, the change process goes through two steps. First, the domain name registar must update it's records for your domain, which may take as long as 2 hours. Then, individual ISPs will gradually update their domain name information, which could take as long as 72 hours depending on the ISP.

When a site is moved and a domain name is changed, individual users will need to wait until their ISP updates their domain name information before they will be able to see the new site or the site at the new location. It's also possible for users to go back and forth for a short period between seeing the old location and the new location, as cache gets updated at the ISP level as well as the local network level. Most users though will see the new location within a couple of hours without issue.