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Okay, I have a pretty complex problem, so I'll get right to it. I'm a designer who built a new website for my client. Their old site is hosted at GoDaddy, as well as their email. Problem is, the guy who built the original site decided to put the original domain name and hosting under HIS personal GoDaddy account. Well, that turned out to be a bad move for several reasons. Here's how it's all tied together.

The original domain name, www.domainoriginal.com, was actually purchased at Network Solutions. The original web designer pointed the nameservers from Network Solutions to his GoDaddy account, where the email and hosting is setup.

The new domain name, www.domainnew.com, was purchased under a new and separate GoDaddy account belonging to the company, and the new website was built under a 3rd party platform (Big Commerce). So, the www.domainnew.com is already pointed to the new website using A records at new GoDaddy account. All is fine there. However, they still need www.domainoriginal.com to point to the NEW website as well. (The old one can simply be deleted, it is NOT important). AND, they want to keep their old email addresses intact and working as well, but under the NEW GoDaddy account.

Obviously, I have no DNS control at Network Solutions, and I have no idea what kind of control I have at GoDaddy under the old account because the web designer will not let me see inside his account. But, he and GoDaddy both tell me nothing can be done other than to repoint the nameservers to Network Solutions, and then repoint the A record to my new website, www.domainnew.com, and point the MX Records to GoDaddy. I'm told the downtime would be 24-48 hours if I do this.

Ideally, we'd like to do a domain name transfer and get www.domainoriginal.com in the new GoDaddy account created by the company. But, I'm told this could take up to 7 days. Does this mean the site and email will be down for 7 days? And any emails sent during this time, would they be lost forever?

If I do this, how long could I expect the site and email to go down? And, will the emails be permanently lost? I've gotten different answers from everybody at GoDaddy so I kind of don't trust them anymore...

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks, Tyson

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Domain Name Transfers will not affect your site at all. A transferred domain name will still point to whatever nameservers it was already pointing to. So you won't experience any down time because no matter who owns the domain, it still ends up pointing to the same nameserver. The 7 day process is about EPP keys and approvals, and it's really just more of a hassle.

Downtime occurs when you change nameservers or A records, if not performed correctly.

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The easiest and best method is a GoDaddy to GoDaddy transfer (or "account change") which is detailed at http://help.godaddy.com/article/822. This should allow you to keep any associated email accounts intact (but no guarantees).

If you're transferring from anywhere else, kiss those accounts goodbye unless you can just change out the MX records.

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Perhaps I'm reiterating previous answers to some extent here but if I am then I hope to make it as easy as possible for you to understand. To ensure your website remains online you need to do the following:

  1. Ask your web developer to log into the Network Solutions website using their personal user credentials, and then Unlock the domain domainoriginal.com. They should also check that the registrant email address is a correct email address still in use and being checked either by them or by yourself.

  2. Log into your company GoDaddy account and initiate a Domain Name Transfer for the domain name domainoriginal.com. If the domain name is near the renewal date then you may need to pay for an extra year renewal at the same time.

  3. An email message will be sent out from Network Solutions to the registrant email address with a confirmation link which needs to be clicked to confirm the transfer.

  4. A short while after the transfer has been approved by the clicking on the link (step 3), the domain name should then appear available to manage from within your GoDaddy company account. All DNS settings should be preserved during the domain transfer so both the website and email should continue to work the same at this time.

  5. To redirect the domainoriginal.com to your new website you can either use website code to perform an HTTP 301 Redirect using an .htaccess file or a PHP script for example, or from within your GoDaddy company account you should hopefully be able to setup an equivalent redirect. I would avoid using a CNAME record for this purpose since that can have a detrimental impact on your website SEO.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,

Richard

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