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copied!<p>Just to explain, you have multiple things here:</p> <ul> <li>Domain name</li> <li>DNS nameservers</li> <li>Web server(s)</li> </ul> <p>All of these can be hosted with separate providers, but depending on your provider you might have different management options.</p> <h1>Domain name</h1> <p>Your domain name has a registrar (who you bought it from). That registrar will keep a list of 1-3 'nameservers' which are the addresses for the provider that hosts your DNS.</p> <h1>DNS nameservers</h1> <p>Your DNS is like your address book. That needs to be hosted somewhere, and if your old host didn't let you edit it, it's probably just part of their shared hosting service, and not something you can manage. You will need to change your domain name to point to another set of nameservers at a provider you can manage. Your VPS provider probably has a DNS service, but possibly not free (although many are). If needed you can use a free DNS host like <a href="http://www.xname.org/">XName</a> or <a href="http://www.cloudns.net/">ClouDNS</a>, but depending on your level of knowledge you might find these difficult to use.</p> <p>A basic web server record you will want to add is known as an <code>A</code> record, and will point <code>my-domain.com.</code> and/or <code>www.my-domain.com.</code> (using a separate record) to your web server's IP address.</p> <h1>Web server</h1> <p>Your server has an IP address. If you need to load-balance for performance reasons you'll need your hosting company to provide you a 'virtual IP' or a load-balancer service, behind which you can have multiple servers.</p> <h1>Summary</h1> <p>The way the request goes is:</p> <ol> <li>User types my-domain.com into their browser</li> <li>The user's ISP's DNS server is queried for my-domain.com</li> <li>The web server IP address for my-domain.com is returned</li> <li>The user's browser sends a HTTP GET request to your server to get the web page</li> </ol> <p>One part of the process leads onto the next, so you need to make the 3 things work in harmony to get your site to function.</p>

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