I need some help understanding how I can use my VPS account to host multiple web sites. It all looks pretty simple to setu p using Plesk but I failed on my first attempt.

I have a customer who has an existing site hosted at another provider. I am moving them to my VPS. (My first web hosting sale  )

First I created a new Client via the Client pane in Plesk. That was easy.
Next I selected the client by clicking on the client name in the Client pane. This brought me to a pane where I can create a new domain for the client.

Now I don't understand how I can do this. I have only one IP address. How can I be using it and my client be using it at the same time. It says it is a shared IP address but I don't understand how this works.

I went to site where the customer got their domain name and changed the nameserver entry to point to my nameservers:
ns1.allcompso.com
ns2.allcompso.com

This is where I screwed up. I did this before uploading the site to the new domain I created above. (For some reason I can't ftp to that new domain but that is a different story). I was under the impression that a change like that would take 24 hours or more to take affect but it seems to have taken affect immediately. How come?

I panicked and set the servers back to what they were before. Now, it has been 5 or 6 hours and if I try to get to the customers site, I am presented the default Plesk page that says the site hasn't been uploaded yet. Why did it switch so quickly when I changed it to point to my nameservers but now it is taking forever to switch back? I don't understand that.

Now here is something else I don't understand. If I try to access my customers site from another network (one at work), I see the customer's site not the Plesk page. If I ping the domain, the IP Address is the one provided by the other hosting company. If I ping the domain from my pc, it shows my VPS IP address. This is too strange. Can anybody explain this to me?

I even went so far as to delete the domain and deactivate the client. I still get to the Plesk page if I try to access the customer's site from here. How is that possible? 

In the new domain there is a DNS page. It contains something like the following where customerdomain is the customers domain name and allcompso.com is my VPS domain:
Host   Record type   Value
customerdomain.com.   NS   ns1.allcompso.com.
customerdomain.com.   NS   ns2.allcompso.com.
customerdomain.com.   A   74.50.2.129
customerdomain.com.   MX (10)   mail.customerdomain.com.
ftp.customerdomain.com.   CNAME   customerdomain.com.
mail.customerdomain.com.   A   74.50.2.129
ns.customerdomain.com.   A   74.50.2.129
webmail.customerdomain.com.   A   74.50.2.129
www.customerdomain.com.   CNAME   customerdomain.com.


This was all generated by Plesk. I assume I don't need to change anything here. Is that correct?

As you can see, I am totally lost. Can you help me understand how this all works?

Thanks,
George

I'm not sure my PC (the one I'm using right now to access the web via my Internet Provider) is a nameserver. I believe it does cache DNS entries though because I found that ipconfig /flushdns is suppose to flush my local cache. I did this but it didn't seem to have any affect. Anyways, I think I am dealing with two nameservers, one is at the other hosting company and one is in my VPS. Is that correct?

So if the name is cached in my PC's local DNS cache, the browser doesn't have to go any further to resolve it. Is that correct? This was my understanding when I discovered ipconfig /flushdns. I thought sure that flushing it would take care of the problem but when it didn't, I wasn't sure what was going on.


So in my example, the nameservers you mention here are the ones at the other hosting company right? Might my ISP have nameservers as well? If I use dnsstuff.com to get a DNS report, it still shows the old IP address. So I think the new IP address that I temporarily set is stuck in my ISPs cache. Odd how that one took affect almost immediately but when I switched it back it is taking many hours (almost 24 so far) to propagate. It still isn't resolving correctly at the time of this writting but I agree that it is caching that is causing the affects I am seeing. It just isn't what I expected.

Okay.

So there is something in the HTTP headers that tells my VPS how to route the request to the proper domain within my VPS. Correct?

Does it do this using the nameservers embedded in my VPS environment? Do I need to configure them or are the default values established when I create the domains sufficient?

Thanks for the help. I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of what is going on.

George

Never mind, I figured it out.

I can FTP to the shared IP Address. I specified the FTP username and password I setup when I created the domain. When I connected using Filezilla, it somehow figured out (probably using the FTP username) where I needed to be and put me in the proper directory for the new domain. Amazing. Magic.

So now I can copy all the files from httpdocs folder on the customers exiting site to the httpdocs folder on the site I created. Then switch the nameservers and there shouldn't be any interruption in service.

Cool! 

George

Thanks Vlad,

Your answers were very helpful. I transfered the site and it is live without any interuption in service. The customer is delighted.

Thanks again for the help,
George

hi.
we have a server (vps) with ns1.samaric.com dns but this address was on our another server.
so we set the domain dns now it will set to first server, but we want it set to the new server.
how we can change the new server dns to solve the problem ?

thnx, regards.

yup you right.
but i can't change the ns1.samaric.com ip and it set to the first server.

QUOTATION: In order to use your nameservers, you must register ns1.samaric.com with *.*.*.* (this is the new server ip) at your registrar.
when i want set the domain dns at ns1.samaric.com it get the first server ip but we want it get the new server ip!
i want to change the vps dns!

thanx for feedback.

so, we don't access to our registrar to change the ip !!!

please help us.