Knowledge base
What is propagation?

Merriam-Webster defines propagation as:
The act or action of propagating : as a : increase (as of a kind of organism) in numbers b : the spreading of something (as a belief) abroad or into new regions c : enlargement or extension (as of a crack) in a solid body
For our purposes, definition B is most appropriate. Quite literally, propagation is the time during which your DNS Zone information is spread abroad to servers that didn't know about it before.
Why does it take so long? -There are various reasons, but some studies have suggested that there are literally millions of DNS Servers that need to be notified of the new information.
Propagation takes two forms, changes to your DNS Zone and changes to your WHOIS information. The WHOIS is the master record that tells every DNS Server in the world which is the authoritative server for your domain. A change to your WHOIS information (done by your domain registrar) can take up to 72 hours to propagate fully. A change to your DNS Zone information typically affects only a handful of servers, and so is done much more quickly.
Categories
Getting started:
Cpanel control panel:
- How do I access my control panel?
- How do I access the Fantastico auto-installer?
- Awstats: Error: LogFile parameter
- Access your Cpanel before your domain has propagated
- Cron jobs: what are they, and how to use them
Webhost manager (WHM):
- Do not change the username or domain name for any of your domains
- Always let WHM finish the current process
- Do not use hyphens or underscores in usernames
- Access all accounts with the WHM password
- Setting strong passwords
Questions and tips:
E-mail:
- Blocking all mail to an e-mail address
- What are the SMTP and POP server addresses?
- Mailing lists: limits of usage
- What happens to e-mail when the server is down: is it returned to the sender or lost?
- How do I access webmail for my account?
Domains and DNS:
FTP and files:
- What are the FTP timeout settings?
- The public_html and www directories
- What is the maximum number of FTP connections per user?
- What is the max number of files/directories I can display in FTP?
- File permissions explained
Htaccess magic:
CGI, PHP and Perl:
- What is the path to..?
- Formmail: important notes
- ImageMagick
- SuExec: what it is and how it affects your scripts