Ok,

So you registered your domain name, and created a Free cPanel Hosting account here for your domain, lets call it test.com. Note this does not affect hosted users using a free sub domain, e.g. yourname.tfcph.com, only people who have bought their own domain, www.mycooldomain.com etc.

So you logged into your domain registrar for test.com and changed the name server settings for it to be:

ns1.tfcph.com
ns2.tfcph.com

You then type in http://www.test.com into your browser window, and nothing comes up, or some weird domain parked page comes up! What's going on?

Basically your Internet Service Provider (ISP) needs to update its records on what domains point where. Right now your ISP still thinks test.com points to the weird parking page you saw.

Basically you have to WAIT for your ISP to do its automated run of updating the domain name records. Some ISP's get it done within 30 minutes, while some slow updating ISP's can take 2-3 days.

Depending on how fast they update their records, is how fast you will see http://www.test.com actually run off your TFCPH hosting account.

But let's say its been 5 hours, and you are stressing out that you can't access your new super-cool TFCPH hosting account, you can try this temporary trick below. Remember this is temporary, so remember to reverse this procedure after a few days:

For Windows XP users (and other Windows users)

1. Click on the Windows Start Button -> Click on the Search button.

2. In the "Search for files or folders named:" field, type in: hosts

3. In the "Look in:" field (the field that asks you where to search, C:\ etc) type in C:\windows

4. Click the Search Now button and wait.

5. You will see it returns a file called "hosts", just like that. Double Click on it and it will ask you what to open the file with. Pick Notepad from the list.

The "hosts" file looks something like this in Notepad:


# Copyright © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host


Add these two lines below the last line in that file.

208.101.18.84 test.com
208.101.18.84 www.test.com

Obviously change both test.com's to YOUR DOMAIN NAME and remember to save the file. That's it.

This basically forces your computer to access http://test.com and http://www.test.com from TFCPH and not whatever other place your ISP thinks your domain is pointing at. Note this is only so you can see your site, others might be able to see it already, depending on their ISP.

Restart your Internet Browser to make sure it will work with this new setting. This trick is useful so you can see your account working, or still be able to update files and do work on your websites while any changes happen (rare).

This trick also works with TFCPH sub domains. If TFCPH ever has to modify some internal settings that requires your ISP to update, use this same trick to make your site work in the mean time for you while your ISP updates - follow the numbered steps but replace test.com with yoursubdomain.tfcph.com instead.

Remember to delete the two lines in the hosts file after a couple of days. Your ISP should have updated by then.