This is a continuation in a series of articles about updating your DNS records that begin here.

Now that you have updated your DNS records, you may be wondering what happens next. The process of updating DNS records can be a waiting game for results; domain hosts do not typically update changes to their records in real time. As such, you will need to consult with your domain host for their individual estimated wait or completion times. You may also run into odd or unfamiliar behavior when accessing your website. Below will be some common situations that you may encounter while waiting for your DNS records to fully update.

This will change from host to host. Some hosts will state to wait 24 hours for their records to be updated, while others will request that you wait 72 hours before checking for any changes. This is a normal part of the process and cannot be changed.

If after the domain host’s stated wait period you are still not seeing expected results, you can jump down to the Resolving Errors section of this article.

During the time defined by your domain host, your website will be in a state of flux. You may visit the URL and see a number of things occurring throughout the time frame. The following are some examples of what you or your website visitors may encounter during the time frame defined by your domain host.

Please keep in mind that you may see some–or all–of these examples at varying times throughout the updating process; these are all expected and normal parts of said process.

This error message may populate when you–or a visitor–tries to enter your domain’s URL into the browser’s address bar. This is a normal part of the updating process; the domain host will resolve (or update) the records incrementally. This means that the “insecure” version of your site may be live, but the secure version and its corresponding SSL certificate will not be active or migrated just yet.

You can check this by manually typing in “http://www.yourdomain.com” where “yourdomain.com” is the URL of your actual website. If this properly redirects you to your BoxCast Site, this means that the process has finished for the “insecure” version and the secure version will follow soon. Though this error can be alarming–especially since many browsers will warn you that you could get a virus by accessing an insecure site–it is a normal part of the process and should resolve on its own with time.

This error means that your domain host is either still updating the DNS records on their end or there is an error in the DNS records you have updated. You will need to check your records for any errors by logging into your domain host.

As with the other errors, this occurs when some of your website has been redirected to BoxCast Sites, but not all of it. This will gradually change as your domain host resolves the new records on their end. Some pages may reflect the new version on BoxCast Sites, while other pages may still show the old version. This will update as the domain host finalizes the DNS records.

This occurs typically when you have a page whose URL is different from the original version of your site, prior to migration.

For example, you may have a page on your original site where the URL is shown as “www.yourdomain.com/about.php”. On your new BoxCast Sites website, the same exact page may be listed as “www.yourdomain.com/about”. The difference is what’s at the end of the page’s own unique URL on the old version: “.php”. This small difference can cause search results to redirect to a 404 page, as the “.php” version of that page no longer exists.

To avoid this, it’s recommended to set up 301 redirects for any pages that have such suffixes as “.html,” “.htm,” “.php.” or others on your original site. To learn more about setting up 301 redirects, please reference this article.

If your original website’s pages do not have any suffix to their URLs, the recommended practice while creating your BoxCast Site is to name the URLs of each page exactly as they appear on your current site. This means your About page’s URL on the BoxCast Site should match the About page’s URL of your previous/current site.

For example, if you are using a template that labels the About page as “About Us,” but your previous/current site is labeled as “About,” you will want to rename the URL on your BoxCast Site to match the original page’s URL.

To learn more about renaming your URLs in BoxCast Sites, please reference this article.

Google and other search engines will cache web pages routinely. This allows them to present pages quickly. However, they do not update in real time. This means that the preview description of the page may not update automatically when you migrate your website to BoxCast Sites.

You can either wait for search engines to refresh the results on their own (which may take several weeks or more), or you can request that search engines recrawl your webpage. You can learn more about this process by referencing Google and Bing's instructions on how to submit your site for a recrawl.

This can occur when you do not apply new meta tags to your pages before publishing. You can do this by editing the meta tags in the BoxCast Sites editor page.

This can occur when you do not apply appropriate SEO tags to your pages before publishing. You can do this by editing the SEO options in the BoxCast Sites editor page or dashboard.

To learn more about how to update your SEO tags, click here.

If any of the above errors have not resolved themselves within your domain host’s defined time frame, you will first want to check that your DNS records were updated correctly.

Check for the following in your domain host’s DNS records:

If you have located any such errors in the DNS records, correct them as soon as possible.

Please note that any subsequent updates to the DNS records will still “reset the clock” for how long the domain host will resolve the records. This means that you will need to anticipate another 48 hours, or other specified time frame, to pass before you can expect to see results.

If you have checked the DNS records for errors and cannot locate any, please contact the domain host’s support team. We at BoxCast unfortunately cannot troubleshoot DNS issues; we are only able to provide you with the correct information to use and which records need to be updated or added. The domain host will need to assist you with subsequent issues.