Receiving the Domain/Site

[MrOriginal]

This is a very newbie question but I am new to the process:

When you win a domain via godaddy auction or any method of buying a previously used/expiring domain.

How do you get the domain and contents of the site and begin using it?

Does someone transfer it to your domain registrar account and then you punch in your hosts DNS nameservers?

Also if yes, when the site is added to your hosting cpanel, how do you "retain" all the content that it previously had?

Do they send you a backup of the site or something and you upload it through your file manager (public_html or whatever its called)?

Thanks

 

[nielsencl]

Sorry no on bothered to help you before this!

When you buy a domain at Godaddy, it will be moved into your Godaddy account. And that is just the domain and not any content. Other sites where a company is selling a domain are like this.

But on some sites and when you buy from a person, they will either "push" the domain into your account at the same registrar where the domain is now, or they will provide you with an "code" that you can use to transfer the domain to your own registrar of choice. You will have to pay for 1 additional year of registration when you transfer.

That's for buying a domain. If you buy a "web site" then you are buying all of the content for that site. In this case you may be able to take over ownership and monthly cost of the account, or you can transfer the site to your own host.

To move the site, many can be transferred by using FTP to download all of the site files, and then uploading them to a new hosting account. For larger and database-driven sites like WordPress it will be much easier to have the current owner do a "cPanel backup" of the entire site which includes everything including DNS, email accounts, databases, and all other files. The seller can generally do this or they can ask their support person to make the back up.

Once the backup has been made they can email it to you or set up FTP so you can download the file. Then you can upload the file to the new hosting account, generally in the root, above /public_html/.

At this point you will have to contact your support staff and ask them to restore the cPanel backup. Check with them first before starting this to make sure there are no questions or problems.

The last step for a site that has been moved is to change the name servers for the domain at the registrar. It may take up to 24 hours, but often your newly moved site will start working in a short while.