Launch Day: What To Expect

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Editing your site’s DNS record is the step that will point your URL to your new site. As the DNS change starts to propagate, you’ll start to see your URL point to your new site on different devices. It could take about a day before you see your new site appear on all devices.

Changing your site’s DNS is more like filling a swimming pool with water than flipping a switch to turn on a light. Filling a pool is a process that takes several hours to complete; the entire pool isn’t full of water as soon as you crank on the spigot. Likewise, when your URL is transitioned to point to your new site, it will take some time before the data from your WordPress site trickles out to every device that accesses your URL.

Why Your Site Doesn’t Propagate To All Devices At The Same Time

The time your URL’s DNS change will take to appear is called Time To Live (TTL). Different DNS companies have different TTL times.

Beyond the DNS company, different intermediaries will have their own TTL times. The TTL time for a specific device can be different depending on:

  • Operating system
  • Browser
  • Internet Service Provider
  • Whether the device is behind a firewall

And other factors. That’s why you could encounter a situation where you, say, see your new site on your phone, but still see your old site on your computer.

Editing Your Site

Prior to launch, you will use a URL that starts live- to edit your site. Once your site launches, you will use a new URL formatted like this: yoursite.com/wp-admin

Once your DNS change is made, check your site’s URL to see whether your Rayos Platform site appears at your URL on your device before working in your site’s admin.

When you see your URL point to your new site on the device you are using to view it, stop using the live- URL to access your admin area. Start using your regular URL to access your admin area instead.

Pausing Newsletters

If you have newsletters, we strongly recommend not sending out any newsletters the day your DNS records are changed. Since the process of transitioning to your new site is a rolling change that varies depending on device, links to new content on your WordPress site won’t work on devices still displaying your old site, and links to new content on your old site won’t work on devices pointing to your new site.