Domain DNS WWW Record Help

[Harmonic]

Hello WDF,
I have a friend in the states who owns a small company doing local SEO work and sometimes webdesign. He recently did a small site for a Law Office. This Law Office hosted their own site (basic html only site) on their own Windows Server - a server that also handles their email, file storage and other.

The problem is that the site that was built for them requires a mySQL database and the Law Office's tech support is... inexperienced. Because of this I suggested to my friend that he takes over the hosting for the site, but only the site (not email etc). He is on a dedicated IP with GoDaddy.

I told him to create an account on his server using the domain name of the site, and get the Law Office to point a WWW record over to his server IP address. This way only the site's location will change, and all other things (such as email) will still be handled by the Windows Server. Was I wrong about this?

He created the account, and the WWW record was pointed to his IP, but now when you navigate to the site the message "Sorry this site is currently not available" appears (the same message that shows when navigating directly to the IP address).

What did they do wrong? Was there a better way to do this? Was the account on GoDaddy just made wrong? Was the WWW record supposed to be pointed to something like this: IPADDRESS/~domainname.com?

Any help or advice is much appreciated!

[shovenose]

Well, if you changed the DNS on the domain name it can take up to 24 hours for your local ISP to update the info. see what happens if you try to access it through a proxy like hidemyass.com or something!

[Harmonic]

Thanks for the reply, but I already checked it through a proxy. This change was done yesterday. At first the old site still showed, but when viewed through a proxy the error page was visible. Now that the ISPs have updated its the error page even without the proxy.

[Webzarus]

That message is the standard message for godaddy servers, sometime it reflects a mis configured dns entry, sometimes it reflects an incorrect setting on the godaddy servers. Especially if the dns and web hosting both are not on godaddy servers.

Check the hosting server account to make sure the domain name is setup and pointed to an actual folder. I have seen where when you manually create a folder and point the domain name it doesn't always work, but if you add the domain name with the control panel and let the control panel create the folder it always works.

[Harmonic]

Thanks for the tip. I got him to fork over his godaddy information and when I logged in the first thing I noticed was that no domain was associated with the folder. I added in the domain name and used the folder as the path.

For about 5 minutes it said pending, but now its completed. Still getting that error page though, even through proxy!

[Webzarus]

It usually takes about 30 minutes for the change to actually start mapping to that folder, I believe I read that once as they dump their internal cache every 30 minutes or so.

[shovenose]

GoDaddy sucks. Anyway...glad you figured out the problem!

[Harmonic]

I'd just like to thank everyone for your help. Looks like the change I made was all that was needed, site's up and live!

[Webzarus]

GoDaddy sucks. Anyway...glad you figured out the problem!

Wasnt a godaddy caused issue ?

[shovenose]

Irrelevant. Godaddy still sucks :P