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Help

What’s happening while you wait

Last updated September 29, 2026

When you point your domain at us and add a website, several things happen one after another, and each has to finish before the next can start. Nothing is broken while you wait. Here is what’s going on, and why it usually takes 10 to 30 minutes.

Step by step

  1. You change the domain’s nameservers at your registrar (the company you bought the domain from) to the two shown in your Panel. This is also how you prove the domain is yours: only a domain’s owner can change its nameservers, and those two names belong to your account alone, so nobody else on our servers can take your domain. Your registrar passes the change to the domain’s registry, the organization behind .com, .net and the rest. That usually takes a few minutes and sometimes a few hours.
  2. You add the website in the Panel. The Panel asks the registry which nameservers your domain uses. When it lists your two, your ownership is confirmed and the website is added on the spot. If the registry doesn’t show them yet, the Panel says so, and you try again in a few minutes. Your website space is ready straight away.
  3. We build your DNS zone, at once: your website’s address, www and the email security records. Email delivery records join them when you set up email. That takes seconds, and both of our nameservers have it within a minute or two.
  4. The rest of the internet learns your address. Other servers remember answers for up to an hour. A new domain usually works within minutes, but if somebody looked it up before it existed, their server may remember “no such site” for a while. Checking again and again can make it look broken for longer.
  5. Your HTTPS certificate. Let’s Encrypt, the free service that issues certificates, only issues one once it can see your domain pointing at our server. So we wait until your address works, switch it on at our next check (every 10 minutes), and the certificate arrives a minute or two later. Your website’s card in the Panel counts down to that check and then tells you when it’s waiting for Let’s Encrypt.

Why it can’t go faster

Read it backwards. You can’t have HTTPS until the address works. The address can’t work until the DNS zone exists. The zone can’t be built until we know the domain is yours. And we only know that once your registrar has changed the domain’s nameservers to your two, which is why that comes first. Most of the wait is your registrar’s update and the certificate.

While you wait

  • Upload your website by FTP, or install WordPress, Joomla or Drupal from the website’s card. Both work right away.
  • Check DNSSEC at your registrar. If it’s switched on, turn it off when you change nameservers, or the domain stops working.
  • Set up email. Choose where the domain’s email lives on the Email tab: with us, Google or Microsoft. Email for the domain starts working once the nameservers have been changed and the domain is added.
  • Try not to reload the address every minute. See step 4.

Still not working after 30 minutes?

At your registrar, check that the domain lists exactly the two nameservers shown in your Panel, nothing else, and that DNSSEC is off. Then email info@libre.wtf and tell us the domain. More detail is in the help guide.