How to switch the primary domain for your account

There may come a time when you want to change the domain name for your Winhost site. If you ever find yourself in that position, you’re in luck, because we made sure that change is easy, quick and painless.

In the Site Tools section of Control Panel, click on the “Change Domain” icon or link.

Enter the domain into the “New Domain Name” field on the next page. Do not enter “www” into that field! If you do, your DNS will be set up incorrectly and the new domain won’t work.

Hit the green “Change” button to finish.

That was easy, right?

But as all the text on that page suggests, there are some things to watch out for when you change the domain.

The number one thing to be aware of is if you are switching the primary domain to a domain that is currently being used as a domain pointer, you have to delete the domain pointer before making the domain name change. If you don’t delete the pointer, the name change will fail.

Also something that’s essential but easy to forget – the name servers for the new domain have to be set to use the Winhost name servers:

ns1.winhost.com
ns2.winhost.com
ns3.winhost.com

How you make that change varies depending on where your domain is registered, so check with your domain registrar for details (if your new primary domain was previously a domain pointer, or was registered through Winhost, your name servers should already point to Winhost).