I am at a loss of what to do here. I bought a domain name some time ago, but just that.  Tonight, I bought a subscription to DemonVPS to use as a web server. Following their tutorial, I put the index.html file in the correct place, but it wouldn't show up. I asked around online, and apparently I need to update my DNS server. Godaddy says I need to do it through DemonVPS, but I'm not sure how to do it (I am very new to web development; the most I've done before is a local LAMP stack on my Linux machine). How can I go about doing this?
How do I update my DNS server so that it points to my new web server?
web hosting;dns;webserver
It does not sound like that was good advice. I do not have the details, so I will assume normal circumstances where you have one registrar and a separate host.If your domain name is registered with GoDaddy (or anyone really), you can host it within their DNS for free (assuming GoDaddy) and I recommend that. I always like to see the registrar host the DNS because often the DNS control panel is more advanced than host control panels though this is not always the case. The other reason is network stability and scale.You will need:An A record for domain.tld that points to your sites IP addressprovided by your host.A CNAME -or- an A record for WWW._The CNAME would be a www or www.domain.tld alias that points to domain.tld._The A record would be for www.domain.tld that is the same IP address as domain.tld.Optionally_An MX recrod that points to domain.tld for e-mail.If you use your host for DNS, then things change only a little bit.You will need:Everything above (MX is still optional).Changing the name server NS records in GoDaddys DNS to point to thehost name servers often something like ns1.domain.tld (host). You will always need two name servers and your host will provide these specific domain names.It would much simpler to add the records to your registrars DNS simply because you would not have to change the registrars NS records to point to the hosts DNS servers. As well, The SOA record likely already exists within the registrar's DNS.I think that would be all you need. Please let me know if I left anything out or if any of this is unclear. I can always update the answer.