Confused about DNS URLs and Directories

Hi

I’ve been using wordpress for a good while and have built a couple of sites using this great software. Usually I’ve bought the domain with the host and then build the site from there. The result has always beeen lovely http://www.mysite.com/about http://www.mysite.com/faqs urls for each of the pages.

I’ve built a test site for the company I’m involved in and we have just bought the hosting package. Rather than trying to transport the test site to the new host I’m going to just start from scratch and load up all the plugins, pics, content etc in a 6 hour burst of activity.

The only problem I can see at the moment is that the domain is owned by godaddy and currently points to the current/old company website. I’ve looked at some other websites that are pointing domains and rather than showing the lovely http://www.mysite.com/about http://www.mysite.com/faqs urls for each of the page/post instead are either remaining as the root http://www.mysite.com or showing http://www.mysite.com/(a big mess of characters).

I wonder if there is a way of keeping the nice format displayed in the browser? Also, does this have an impact on sea and how pages and comments crop up in google search results for example.

If we do decide instead to fix this by transferring the domain then will we experience significant downtime.

As you can probably tell I’ve got a limited understanding of the tech involved..

Blessings