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Why 48–72 Hrs for DNS update?

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Hi there, we currently have a squarespace site with the domain and DNS being hosted by a third party. We have just built a new Squarespace site and need to now point our domain to the new site.

Squarespace says “If all records are entered correctly, your domain should connect to your site within 24 hours. At times, it can take up to 72 hours. Visit the Domains panel at any time to check your progress.” 

Does anyone know if that is a Squarespace thing or a third party DNS issue? As our DNS host has quick controls of making updates in 2 minutes, so we are confused as to why it can be up to 72 hours, is it a Squarespace reason for the slow changeover? Doesn't make it easy to 'launch' our new site, when we don't know when it will show up as new.

Love any thoughts people have. Thank you. PAT

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9 hours ago, pat said:

Does anyone know if that is a Squarespace thing or a third party DNS issue? As our DNS host has quick controls of making updates in 2 minutes, so we are confused as to why it can be up to 72 hours, is it a Squarespace reason for the slow changeover?

This is how the internet works. It isn’t specific to Squarespace. When you change a DNS record, that change is only made on your domain name host. From there, it needs to propagate across the internet to every other DNS server where your domain name is recorded. This ‘propagation’ process copies details from server to server so that everyone on the internet can find your website. The process should complete in a couple of hours but you should allow up to 72 hours before reporting issues, because it can take this long. There are ways to speed up the process but it involves pre-planning; if you are ready to go live now, these steps won’t help you. 

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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  • 9 months later...

We have followed Squarespace's instructions to repoint our domain from our old version of our Squarespace site to our new version.  Both are on Squarespace, have different built in domains (ie old.squarespace.com and new.squarespace.com) and we have changed the verify.our-domain.com DNS entry (and therefore deleted the old one), and reattached the third party domain name in Squarespace.  We made these changes 68 hours ago, and within minutes were able to access our new Squarespace site correctly on the new domain, most of the time.

In a clean browser (ie. with an emptied cache) if I refresh www.our-domain.com sometimes I get old.squarespace.com and sometimes get new.squarespace.com.

The DNS Propagation Checker at whatismydns.net shows that the new, correct verify domain has propagated worldwide, which is the only DNS entry that changed, and the TTL was only 30 minutes in any case.

What could be causing this behaviour please?

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  • 11 months later...

Sometimes it happens fast, sometimes not. Usually the sites that are more important are down for longer times. Murphy's Law. Does ANYONE know how to avoid this? I'm open to ANY suggestions. ANYTHING....i'm not a programmer but there HAS to be a way around this. How do big ecommerce companies do this? You they can't be down for 72 hours......

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2 hours ago, ddotcom12 said:

Does ANYONE know how to avoid [72 hours downtime]?

As I mentioned above, with some pre-planning it is possible to speed up website transfers.

The way to do this is to tweak the DNS records for your domain several days before the planned migration.

To explain, each DNS record has a TTL (Time to Live) value that specifies, in seconds, how long Internet Service Provider (ISP) should remember the DNS record before checking if the record has been updated. I'm simplifying here, but this is roughly what happens! Imagine that a customer checked your site 8 hours ago. If the TTL value was set to 86,400 seconds (24 hours) then their ISP will happily carry on using the website details that they used last time around, even if the website has been moved to a new provider. This means they'll see the old site and continue to see if for some hours/days to come. Only when the TTL has expired (after 86,400 seconds!) will their ISP check if the details have changed. Again, I'm simplifying to avoid a 4-page explanation, but this is roughly what happens. 

Domain name providers want you to have a high TTL setting (or long caching time) because it is much faster for every internet user to check the "cache" than it is to do a full lookup on a DNS server where the records are stored and edited. This greatly reduces internet traffic, gives a faster experience and saves the DNS hosting company money.

Of course the problem with having a high TTL setting is that if your ISP has already cached the current (old) IP address of your website, it won’t check for a DNS update for your domain until the TTL has passed, even if you've just updated the DNS records to point to a new website.

So the trick is to reduce the TTL of each DNS record (those that will change) to say 300 seconds (5 minutes) and to do this several days before you start the transfer. In fact, if the TTL is set to 24 hours, it should be at least three days beforehand. And when you have completed the changeover by editing the A and CNAME records to point to the new website, don't forget to change the TTL back to a more reasonable setting.

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Edited by paul2009

About me: I've been a SQSP User for 18 yrs. I was invited to join the Circle when it launched in 2016. I have been a Circle Leader since 2017. I don't work for Squarespace. I value honesty, transparency, diversity and good design ♥.
Work: I founded and run SF.DIGITAL, building Squarespace Extensions to supercharge your commerce website. 
Content: Views and opinions are my own. Links in my posts may refer to SF.DIGITAL products or may be affiliate links.
Forum advice is free. You can thank me by clicking one of the feedback emojis below. Coffee is optional.

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  • 11 months later...
  • 9 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I have a .ai from NameCheap. I followed the instructions and it has been 48 hours. That is WAY longer than this process ever takes. Anyone else experience this? What can I do to confirm everything is done correctly? The instructions were followed exactly but this is ridiculously long.

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Keeping things simple, would like to understand why in the world TTL (Priority) box is greyed out, even though it is available before adding custom dns record, eventually it greys out. Also when Im  trying to transfer a domain from other registrar to squarespace it does not give an option of automatically moving existing dns records nor add custom records so that we do not see any outage once the transfer is completed. any inputs will be appreciated.

 

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