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domain names

  1. citywest
    Member

    I am setting up a blog at http://www.citywest.wordpress.com. I have purchased the domain name citywestchurch.com and have added this domain as instructed (ie DNS settings etc) What I find is that at times, I can enter citywestchurch.com and be forwarded to my blog (or citywest.wordpress.com gets forwarded to my domain name. But most of the time, I get pushed to some "parking" page for a domain name setup company.

    Apparently it only happens on my main home computer and anyesle entering citywestchurch.com gets access to my page. But me, I get stuck with this stupid parking page. I have spoken to the "parking page people" and they have said there is no reason why I should be sent to them. I have spoken to WordPress help and they have checked my dns settings and all is well. they gave me instructions to flush the DNS out of my PC and they said the only thing left is my ISP.

    My ISP didn't help at all and had no clue. So I am turning to you lot now for guidance.

  2. drmike
    Member

    Checking...

  3. drmike
    Member

    Everything looks OK to me as to the domain being setup. I will make the quick standard mention that you need to not use the 'www' but within your URLs. The citywest bit takles the place of it and 30% of the net and most search engine spiders can't follow such a link.

    I don't see in that lookup anywhere where you should be redirected back to the parking page. It's got to be something with your ISP or your computer. You've already clearing out your cache. Discussed here just to verify the instructions you were given.

    Normally I see your IP address which would tell me where you were coming from. For some reason it's not showing and I can't look at the page source on this terminal. Can you please visit http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/ and tell me what it is please? Please be sure to replace the last set of numbers with a *.

  4. citywest
    Member

    Hi Mike - My address is: 59.101.165.**

  5. drmike
    Member

    Thanks for the reply. Afraid I don't know those folks right off. We have some ISPs here in the States that cache the nameserver information for longer than they're suppost to. (NetZero is one that comes to mind right off)

    If you've done the clearing of the cache, I'm leaning towards your computer is getting it's information from your ISP's nameservers and it's still incorrect. I can think of a way to check with a linux box (ie using the dig command) but that lookup isn't standard on a windows box which is probably what you have. Not sure about the Macs.

    The good news is that as I read it from that DNS report, your data is considered stale after a short period of time (a couple of hours) and should request an update sometime soon. The bad news is it's already been 24 hours, it may be an issue with the ISP and they're caching their DNS incorrectly.

    I just poked around your site without issue so I'm really leaning towards it being something on your end.

    I'd go ahead and clear out your DNS cache. Browser cache as well just to be on the safe side. If it still doesn't work tonight, try it in the morning. :)

    Sorry that I can't point at anything specific and say "that's the issue." The setup looks right to me.

    Good luck,
    -drmike

  6. citywest
    Member

    Hi Mike,

    This talk about data being stale after a couple of hours, is that why I can every now and then access my site through citywestchurch.com? Same thing happened last night - so I went to bed angry. In the morning it was fine again. And again today, it was fine for a while and then it went all wrong again.

    Anything I could do here?

  7. citywest
    Member

    Now it's working again. Why is it doing this?

  8. drmike
    Member

    Only thing I can think of right off is the file and DNS cache clearing.

    It's not doing it on specific pages when you poke around the site, is it?

  9. citywest
    Member

    When I can't connect, I cant poke around at all. Sometimes I can edit, but when I click to view the page, it goes back to the parking page. When it's really bad, I get edit either.

    I think I can edit sometimes because the edit url is still citywest.wordpress. But when I go to view the site, it transfers to citywestchurch.com. I'm no pro at this, but I think there lies the problem.

  10. drmike
    Member

    Afraid that's normal. The backend stays with the wp.com name as it's used for tracking and rankings.

  11. citywest
    Member

    Hey Mike, Jumped on this morning and got the parking page again. Seriously causing me some grief now. I will call my ISP after work today. Are there any specific questions I should be asking?

  12. drmike
    Member

    Ask them how long they cache DNS data.

    I should have thought about this earlier. Next time it happens, open up a prompt and do a:

    ping citywestchurch.com

    And please post what you get for the IP address. (this time please include all of the numbers)

  13. citywest
    Member

    Hi Mike,
    I don't seem to be having this issue any longer. Which is great. I find firefox works heaps better with wordpress. Could this issue have been the 72 hour wait to register all domain names? It seems strange though that all other pc's apart from my own were able to log onto the site.

    Anyway, I haven't had this problem for 10 hours now so hopefully that's the end of it. Thanks for your help

  14. drmike
    Member

    The 72 hour issue went away a few years ago when Network solutions changed the way they update the nameservers that they control for the *.com and the *.net domains. They used to update them only twice a day. Now they update a server every five minutes with all 13 master nameservers and their backups being updated once an hour.

    Usually when someone quotes the 72 hour nowadays at you, they're trying to pass the buck and hoping that the issue will resolve itself by then. (Being honest here as I've heard that many times recently from one specific domain registar that I hate dealing with but I'm stuck with them.)

    And again, the lookup looked fine. dnsreports first polls the nameserver data direct from the root nameservers and then from the nameservers directly.

    It probably was a DNS cache issue with your ISP. As I read the report, DNS information for your domain is considered stale after only a short time. (A couple of hours) I just think your ISP wasn't updating as quickly as they should be.

    I'm glad it's working for you now. :)
    -drmike

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