Domain Dictionary · Routing & Delivery
LiteSpeed: what answers once the record resolves
The A record is correct, the server is up, and the page you get belongs to something else entirely.
The short answer
LiteSpeed is a high-performance web server that reads Apache configuration as written and carries a page cache of its own, and it is the engine our hosting runs on. The part that matters once you own several names is how it decides what to send: not from the address the request arrived at, but from the hostname inside the request. One address, many names, and a lookup table saying which name belongs to which site.
Which is why a perfectly correct A record can still bring back the wrong page.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
0
Words left unexplained
100+
Terms in the dictionary
Real
Cases, not hypotheticals
Free
Forever, no account needed
Under the hood it takes your .htaccess files and Apache rules exactly as they stand, then serves requests through an event-driven design that fits far more of them onto one machine. Its own cache answers before anything troubles to wake PHP, driven on WordPress by the LSCache plugin.
For somebody managing names rather than servers, the useful mental model is a receptionist with a list. The address gets you into the building; the name on the request decides which office you are shown to. If the name is not on the list, you get the lobby.
The right address and the wrong site
Point a new name at your hosting and it may well resolve perfectly and still not work. What you see is a default page, a certificate warning, or occasionally another site on the same machine. Nothing is wrong with your zone. The name simply has no entry in the server's list, because it has not been added to the account as an addon domain or an alias.
The fix is in the panel, not the Zone Editor, and knowing which of the two to open is most of the skill. Rule of thumb: if the name resolves to the correct address, stop editing DNS. Everything after that point is configuration on the server.
www and the bare name are two different names
DNS treats them as unrelated labels, and so does the server. Both have to resolve, both have to be recognised by the site, and one of them should redirect to the other so that a single canonical address is what search engines and visitors settle on. Certificates need to cover both, which is why the free certificate on our plans is issued for the pair.
Get half of this right and the symptoms are oddly specific: the site works with www and not without, or the padlock appears on one form of the name and not the other. Both are configuration, and both are five-minute jobs once you know which layer to look at.
What it does once the name matches
Rewrites, .htaccess rules and most Apache configuration come across without an edit, which is the whole design premise — two decades of accumulated Apache recipes remain good documentation here. Logged-out traffic to a WordPress site comes straight out of the server's cache at the speed of a static file, and only the requests that genuinely need it ever reach PHP and MySQL.
On WordPress the LSCache plugin is how you steer that cache, and it ships with the plan rather than being pointed at in a guide. A general-purpose caching plugin cannot reach the server's engine at all, which is worth knowing before you install one out of habit.
Where this sits on a Hosting & Domains plan
LiteSpeed sits under every tier with NVMe storage behind it, in the London datacentre, and there is no throttled cheaper version of the stack. From the Turbo tier upward an account can hold several sites, each with its own name, its own mailboxes and its own certificate.
The division of labour is the thing to hold on to: your zone decides which machine, the account configuration decides which site, and LiteSpeed decides how quickly the answer comes back.
The reference we reach for on the desk
Names, records and registry rules generate more confused tickets than anything else we handle, so the hundred terms behind them are defined here once, in the register we use on the desk.
A free certificate issues as soon as the name points here, and reissues itself well before the old one lapses.
- Panel screens named rather than described
- 100+ entries, each naming the layer that owns it
- Registry, registrar, reseller and host kept distinct
- About two minutes a term, start to finish
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
This term, pinned down
LiteSpeed defined, placed in the layer that owns it, and shown going wrong — recognise-level after one read.
Registry and registrar kept apart
Every entry says which company owns the thing being described, because that is the difference between fixing it yourself and reporting it to somebody else.
Depth flagged honestly
Some of this you only ever need to recognise; some of it you will actually operate. The entry says which, rather than leaving you to guess.
Plain English, read once
Written to be understood on a first pass rather than to demonstrate that the writer knows the subject.
Cross-referenced, never a cul-de-sac
Neighbouring entries are linked at the foot of the page, so one lookup tends to leave you holding three terms instead of one.
Written where the tickets land
These definitions started life as replies on our own domain desk, which is why they answer the question people actually asked.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Work out which layer owns it
Decide first whether the thing lives at the registry, at the registrar, in the zone or on the server. Almost every wasted hour starts with that question going unasked.
- 2
Confirm the default instead of assuming it
The platform ships this set sensibly. Looking anyway is the whole difference between knowing how your account is configured and hoping about it.
- 3
Open the zone and read it
cPanel's Zone Editor lists every record answering for your name. Five minutes reading your own zone teaches more than an hour of reading about zones.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- LiteSpeed caching in the server rather than bolted on by plugin
- cPanel, the panel most of the industry already runs
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- NVMe storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- WordPress Toolkit, with the updates seen to for you
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- Upgrades applied in place, with no migration when the plan changes
- DNS records you edit yourself, in cPanel's Zone Editor
- Webmail in the browser, plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for any client
- No set-up fee, and nothing charged for joining
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
My new domain resolves to the right server but shows the wrong site. Why?
Because resolution and recognition are two separate steps. The address got the request to the machine; the machine then looks up the hostname to decide which site to serve, and yours is not on the list yet. Add the name to the account as an addon domain or an alias and it will be. Nothing in your zone needs touching — if the address is right, DNS has already finished its job.
Do I need records for both www and the bare domain?
Yes, and they are genuinely separate names as far as DNS is concerned. Both should resolve, the site should recognise both, and one should redirect to the other so a single canonical form is what gets indexed and linked. The certificate needs to cover both too, which on our plans it does automatically. Half-configured is where you get a site that works with www and not without it.
Does the web server have any say in how my name resolves?
None at all, and keeping that boundary clear saves hours. Resolution is answered by the nameservers your name is delegated to, entirely before any web server is involved. LiteSpeed only ever sees a request that has already arrived. If the name resolves to the wrong address, no setting on the server can help; if it resolves to the right one, the problem is not DNS.
If I leave, do my configuration and my names come with me?
They do. A full copy of the site is downloadable from the panel whenever you like, and because the panel is cPanel that backup restores onto any other cPanel host. Names stay registered in your name for the term you paid for and can move to any registrar once the registry's standard sixty-day window since the last registration or transfer has passed.
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