How to minimize website downtime while domain is being transferred

First off, most of us hate downtime, especially on our own websites (duh!). From time to time we might need to transfer the domain names from one registrar to another, however, we might experience some difficulties to keep the website online.

The tricky part is that most domain registrar will either keep your original nameserver setting.

For example, if I am transferring my domains from GoDaddy to Name.com, and my domain’s nameserver are “ns45.domaincontrol.com” and “ns46.domaincontrol.com” (the number following in the nameserver might be different, because apparently GoDaddy has more than 2 nameserver and you will see the domains are allocated with different nameserver when you register the domains with GoDaddy, even if the domains are all under the same account).

Then when you transfer it out, Name.com will keep these nameserver setting and thus the domain will remain pointing to GoDaddy. However, at GoDaddy’s end, the domain’s record would have already been deleted at the time the domain name was transferred out of GoDaddy.

Of course you can change the nameserver and modify the A record and everything to make your website associate with this specific domain name back online. The questions is, you can’t monitor the domain name every 5 seconds, and definitely you can’t make the change right after the domain name was transferred.

Here is what I do:

Most of the hosting company will provide a control panel for users to handle the domain name zone. As long as we can keep the A record of the domain name pointing to the right address, then we can keep the domain name work with the website.

1. I am using Linode, so I will first change the nameserver for my domain to “NS1.LINODE.COM, NS2.LINODE.COM … “ (Please check your own hosting company for instruction and nameserver address), and correctly assign the A record address. Now the is under Linode’s DNS management even though the domain is still with GoDaddy, the registrar.
2. I then do the same thing by submitting my domain transfer request from GoDaddy to Name.com. Of course, name.com will give me the same behavior and keep my nameserver setting the same, which is the Linode’s nameservers. At this point, the website is still online because it’s still pointing to Linode and Linode is still handling it for me.
3. Now I can change the nameservers setting from Linode to Name.com’s default setting and modify the A record. At the instance which the setting is taking effect, the nameservers will be handled by from Lionde to Name.com but normal visitors will not be able to tell.

The method will not just applied to GoDaddy, Name.com and Linode, you name any combination. As long as your hosting company allows you to have add-on domains or allows you to manage your own domain DNS, then you can go ahead and do it.

Hope it helps and let me know if you have better suggestions.