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Hosting Account Domain Name Change Troubleshooting

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Last Updated: June 28, 2011 12:50 PM

If your website's pages do not resolve after changing the domain name on your hosting account, you may be using absolute URLs containing the old domain name in the HTML code for your site. Absolute URLs contain the entire URL path (e.g., "http://www.coolexample.com/default.html"). After a domain name change, you must update any absolute URLs in the HTML to reflect the new domain name. Once you update the URLs and upload the modified pages to your site, the pages will resolve.

We recommend that you use relative URLs when referencing your Web pages. When a website uses relative URLs, the domain name associated with a hosting account can change without the complications that result from the use of absolute URLs. Relative URLs identify a website page in relation to, or in the context of, the current page. If both pages exist in the same website directory, then only the page name is required (e.g. "destinationpage.html"). Because they do not reference the domain name, relative URLs do not require modification when the domain name changes on a hosting account.