When you first subscribe to either a new hosting service or a transfer to a new hosting service, it may take from a few hours up to several days for the site to be visible. All web site name resolution depends on the DNS (Domain Name Service) . Name resolution is the process that enables you to browse to a web site. DNS is a mapping service that translates friendly domain names to the IP addresses that will respond your request to see a particular page/site on the Internet. The DNS mapping service depends on root servers (visualize -at the center of the spiderweb) that then communicate with other DNS servers. When you either sign up for a new domain name OR transfer a new domain name, it is the DNS that has to be updated, in particular the root servers. The update then propagates (spreads out -like a mushroom cloud) to other DNS servers on the Internet. Updates to the DNS root servers usually occur a minimum of twice a day and in some instances ( for example cira registrations) more often. The Internet service provider you are using (as an example in Western Canada it may be us or Telus or Shaw, or another party) receives this DNS information on their Nameservers and then in turn your own computer uses their Nameservers. So until their Nameservers have received the DNS update, you will not be able to properly resolve the site and FrontPage will have trouble publishing to the site.

There is a special situation that applies only to transfers. Sometimes the previous company that was hosting your domain (website) will set an extraordinarily long TTL (Time to Live - should be set to 1 hour , we have seen some cases of it being set to 7 days). What this does is that some DNS servers will look at the TTL and cache that information. So even though the update has gone through and most of the world sees the new information, your ISP might still be serving you the old information. Anytime you are transferring a domain, you should ask the previous domain/web hosting company to purge the records for your domain from their name servers, this will avoid the above scenario.

How can I tell if this is my situation?
There are tools that are available such as NSlookup that could give you the precise information but whenever we set up a new web site for a customer we place on the site a "splash" page welcoming you and also providing some additional information. If when you use your browser to go to your domain and you don't see our splash page then situation 1 applies to you.

How can I tell if this is my situation?
Open your browser, select Tools from the menu at the very top, then select Internet Options from the pull-down menu. A smaller window should open, from there select Connections and on that tab select Local Area Network (Lan) Settings.
Important! Restart your system after making this change.

Sometimes your computer will have an incomplete network and this will definitely prevent you from logging onto the server. We see this most often with people that have a dial up connection to the network.

How can I tell if this is my situation?
The good news is that Windows itself will tell you most of the time when you go to the network settings icon in the windows control panel. Click Start then Settings then Control Panel then find the Network Icon and double click it to open it. On the first tab, it will list information about network services and adapters on your machine. It must include "Microsoft Client for Networks" and the primary logon should be set to "Microsoft Client for Networks". If you are not confident in adding the Microsoft client or if you experience difficulty with adding it, we recommend seeking professional computer assistance in your area.

Firewalls and anti-hacking tools are designed to let you surf pages but trying to logon onto a server requires two way communication and is usually blocked by these products. Examples are Zone Alarm & Symantec's software firewall.

How can I tell if this is my situation?
Take a look at the icons in the "system tray" , hover your mouse over each one in turn and they should display what each does. The solution with software firewalls loaded on a system is to "disable" the firewall and you must reboot (simply disabling will not permit you access, the software is still running). Once you have finished working with your web site, you are free to re-enable the firewall. If your firewall is a corporate firewall, please see your network administrator.