High Impact Missions FAQ

A domain name (e.g. highimpactmissions.com) is the front door to your website. Every domain name must be managed somewhere. A domain name can be configured to point to any webserver to "host" your website. Contrary to what some people think, you may chose to manage your domain name in a different place than your website is actually hosted, although it is usually easier to manage them in the same location.

Your domain management also handles where your emails are handled. And, again, your email server does not need to be in the same place as your hosting or your domain management.

When a customer wishes to transfer a domain to High Impact Missions, there are some basic things that they need to understand.

1. The transfer can take about a week to complete the transfer of the domain itself. This involes coordination between the prior domain manager and High Impact Missions.
2. Once the domain is under the control of High Impact Missions, the "nameservers" can be changed. The "nameserver" is the address, so to speak, of your website. There is an address for your hosting (called "A records") and an address for your email server (called "MX Records").
3. Once the nameservers are switched, it can take up to 72 hours to propigate across the Internet. When someone types a website address (e.g. "www.highimpactmissions.com") into a browser, there Internet Provider (aka. "ISP") has a database of where every domain name is hosted (the "IP address"). As you can imagine, this list is quite vast and is not completely updated every day by the Internet Provider. Every ISP is different, that is why some people seem to see the "new" hosting location for your website before others. And that is why it can take up to 72 hours for the change to take effect for everyone.
4. During the 72 hour window, emails become interesting. If someone sends you an email, their ISP will decide to which email server to send the email. Some ISP's will be pointing to the "new" email server, and some to the "old." That means that during the transfer, the customer must check BOTH email accounts. No emails will be lost, but there is no way to tell which account the emails will go to. Even though both the "old" and "new" email servers have the same email address (e.g. "sales@highimpactmissions.com") they have different email servers. This is not unlike someone having the address "123 Main Street" in one city and "123 Main Street" in another city.
5. To be safe, it is best to allow up to 7 days after the transfer starts, just to make sure every ISP has received the change. At that point, the customer can safely cancel their previous domain, hosting or email service, as applicable.

This is a general description of the process. Please contact High Impact Missions directly for details on how your specific situation may differ.