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Lower the TTL before moving a domain

Shorten how long the world remembers your DNS records a day before a move, so the switch takes minutes instead of hours.

Every DNS record has a TTL (time to live): the number of seconds other servers may remember the answer before asking again. A long TTL means fewer lookups but slow changes. Lowering it a day before you move a website or email means the switch reaches everyone quickly.

When to do this

Lower the TTL before any change you want to take effect fast, for example:

  • moving a website to a new server or to lbreeze;
  • moving email to another provider;
  • changing an important record such as your MX.

The new, shorter TTL only helps once the old one has run out. If a record had a TTL of 3600 seconds, wait at least an hour after lowering it, and to be safe, a day.

Lower the TTL for the whole domain

  1. In your control panel, choose DNS zones and click your domain.
  2. Find the Timing card.
  3. Set Default record lifetime to 300 (five minutes).
  4. Tick Also set every existing record to this lifetime.
  5. Click Save timing.

The message after saving says how many records were changed.

Lower it for a few records only

  1. On the zone page, tick the records you are about to change.
  2. In the bar that appears, type the number of Seconds and click Set TTL.

You can also change a single record's TTL (seconds) by clicking edit beside it.

Make the move, then put it back

  1. Wait at least as long as the old TTL.
  2. Make your change, for example point the records at the new server.
  3. Check that the website or email works in its new place.
  4. Go back to the Timing card, set Default record lifetime back to 3600, tick Also set every existing record to this lifetime again, and click Save timing.

Good to know: The TTL fields will not go below or above the limits lbreeze allows, so if a value is refused, use the nearest one the field accepts.

Why a new name can take an hour to appear

The Negative cache value on the Timing card is how long other servers remember that a name does not exist. If somebody looked up shop.yourdomain before you created it, they may keep getting "no such name" for that long. You rarely need to change it, but it explains why a brand-new subdomain sometimes seems slow to appear.

If your DNS is somewhere else

If you are moving a domain to lbreeze and its DNS is still with your old provider, lower the TTLs there, using that provider's own settings, before you change anything. Then follow Point your domain at lbreeze.

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