Web & SEO
What is nameservers?
Nameservers are the servers that hold the authoritative DNS records for a domain, deciding where requests for that domain are sent.
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Technical definition
Every domain is assigned a set of nameservers, usually two or more, recorded with the domain registrar. When a browser looks up a domain, the lookup chain ends at those nameservers, which return the DNS records that say which server handles the website, which handles email, and so on.
Changing nameservers moves control of all DNS records for that domain to a different provider. Because the change propagates through caches across the internet, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours to take full effect. Editing an individual DNS record is faster and narrower than switching nameservers outright.
In plain terms
Your registrar is where you bought the domain. Your nameservers decide who is allowed to answer questions about it.
Pointing your nameservers at a host is saying: from now on, ask them where my site and my email live. Everything else follows from that one handoff.
Why it matters
This is where connecting a domain to a new site goes wrong, and it goes wrong in a specific way. Someone changes nameservers to point at a new website host, the site comes up, and two days later they notice nobody has received any email. The old DNS records included the mail settings, and the new nameservers do not have them.
Before switching, write down every existing DNS record, mail records in particular, and recreate them at the new provider. If you only need to point the website somewhere new and want to leave everything else alone, change the individual A or CNAME record instead of the nameservers. It is the narrower tool and it will not take your email down with it.
