Newbie to web design. Know nothing. I purchased a domain name from Aplus.net and had it transferred to my hosting co. Hostnexxis. If I did wrong I did not know any better. Hostnexxis had my domain name transferred from Aplus to them.

I called Aplus and gave them the servers names for Hostnexxis and they said that my URL will be available in 24 hours. I get an error message Page can not be displayed when I key in the URL. Is there anything else I need to do. I have published my website.LOL It takes Hostnexxis 2 days to get back with you and their answers don't help because I'm so confused. Somebody please help me. I've been learning as I go and it two me 2 weeks to figure out I needed to give Hostnexxis name servers to Aplus.

There are several components in getting a site up and running. With regards to the domain name you need someone to host the DNS records in addition to having someone host the domain.

The DNS records are used to resolve the domain name to the proper IP address. When you type in www.computing.net, your computer must first check a DNS server to find out what IP address that is. When updating DNS records it can take up to 2 days for those changes to propogate throughout the entire internet.

You can do a ping of your domain name to see what IP it is resolving to. If it is not resolving to a Hostnexxis IP either the DNS records haven't updated yet or they were updated incorrectly. If it does resolve to a Hostnexxis IP, then you need to talk with them to straiten it out.

Michael J

What's your domain name?

my domain name is leadnumberbytenaj.com

The nameservers are stll pointing to Aplus's.

You need to point them to that of your new host.

I called Aplus and they gave them the nameservers of Hostnexxis and they said it would be ready in 24 hours. That was Saturday morning.

Can I do it myself.

I called Aplus again and they sworn up and down that I never called them with the nameservers. Luckily I still have the confirm e-mail that it should take about 24 hours and the name and everything. Gee.

Thanks everyone for helping me. I am truly learning as I go. The main thing is research a hosting company with real customers but the one I have is invisible, live chat no one is ever there, (funny they were there the first few days) phone - leave a message, support ticket system two days of waiting with half answers. I guess I'll go learn to use FTP since I can't upload my website.

Heh. No better time to learn how to FTP than now. :)

Just for future reference, I would NEVER, EVER allow a webhost to handle the domain registration, unless you get your own control panel, and can control your own domain without having to call/submit tickets, etc.

Too many things can go wrong, as you're finding out.

I second Bryan's advice...Most noobies (including myself, several years ago) make the same mistake and have to learn the hard way, so don't feel bad. But the *right* way to do it is to have separate companies handle your domain registration (companies like godaddy & versign do that) and another company to handle your actual web hosting (There are thousands upon thousands of these companies...Always check a host out at http://www.webhostingtalk.com before signing up with them.) Then if you switch web hosts, you don't have to rely on your current web host to let your domain go.

Good luck,
-SN

Thank you everybody for the wonderful advice. I read that later after I had done it. In fact it was stated that sometimes domain co. will hold it "hostage" sometimes.LOL

I'm glad it didn't happen to me "the hostage" because my site is up and running. It's not much to look at but I am a newbie and I've done my best on a very low budget.

There is a control panel that comes with the hosting service and it offers lots of stuff. They threw me out of the forum - saying I was a "sticky" and the forum was for site administrators and to ask my hosting co. newbie questions. gee

I must have done the FTP right because the website is there or they just got tired of my attempts and did it for me.LOL Because the way I did it is I saved in a directory the pages from my site and uploaded the files one at a time. I wasn't sure it that was the right way to do it or what type of file extension. I just took the default it was Unc something.

It was the only way the FTP program worked.

MY URL is leadnumberbytenaj.com and I would like for anyone who would like to critique it without mercy, I'll be willing to learn what you suggest. I intend to do a guestbook, forum, and counter.

What I need is a logo, and some fancy graphics. I wish I knew what questions to ask my hosting company before I start doing this stuff. Like what kind of files, etc.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Just to comment quickly on the site before I head off to work:

The logo on the front page is really unreadable, as is the majority of text on your pages.

I.e. black text on a dark blue/green background doesn't work. The light green text like you have at the beginning is great. The black text is not.

Ok thank you. I was testing out the logo and removed it. Sorry you had to see it. I just went with the default flashplash. Thanks again I will change the text.