Let’s check the Day a Wrong IP Took a Site Down And How We Fixed It. A website is a crucial asset of a business. But sometimes the website goes down, all because of a minor, unintentional mistake. The same happened to one of our websites a few days back. We migrated our website from one server to another. We followed every step carefully. Still, our site goes down for the public. But when we logged in to the admin panel of our website, everything was working fine.
That day, the situation felt confusing. Nothing in the system indicated a problem, yet the site remained unreachable. That’s when we decided to dig deeper and examine the domain’s DNS configuration. Within a few minutes, we discovered the real cause and fixed it.
Want to know what happened to our website and how we fixed the issue? Continue reading.
What Happened to Our Website?
As we mentioned in the beginning, the day our website went down, we migrated it from one hosting server to another. To migrate, we did the following:
- Downloaded the backup files (both the databases from cPanel and the file manager)
- After downloading the backup, we deleted the website from the old server.
- We pointed the domain to the new hosting server by adding the required DNS records (i.e., NS and A records).
- We verified that the domain is connected to the new hosting server.
- Next, we uploaded the backup files. Firstly, the public_html folder was downloaded from the file manager. Then we uploaded the database backup files and verified the DB username and password to ensure that the public_html is configured correctly.
Once done, we checked that opening our website while we are logged in to the admin panel works. At that time, the site appeared perfectly fine. We were happy that the job got done.
Then, suddenly, a team member at another desk, using a different device, shouted that the website was inaccessible. We got worried and tried accessing the website on a different device, but we got the same error every time.
At that time, we realized something was wrong: the site was working fine on the back end, but was inaccessible to public users.
That is when we started looking at what we did wrong and how we could fix the issue to get our website back up for public users.
What We Checked First
To address the issue, we immediately began investigating its causes. We started by checking the server status. Sometimes server maintenance or an outage also causes the trouble. But that was not the issue in our case, as the server side was completely up and working fine.
Next, we started to check the DB name and password. Sometimes a mistake here also causes the issue. But fortunately, that was also correct. Then we started thinking deeply about how we implemented the steps and where we went wrong.
While all the team members were thinking and trying to find the cause, a fellow team member asked whether you had checked the DNS setup, and why you had not performed a DNS record Lookup?
That is where the solution begins.
What is DNS Record Lookup?
DNS record lookup is the process by which you get all the records configured in the DNS setup of a domain name. Lookup can be performed manually or with a DNS Lookup tool.
How Did We Perform DNS Lookup?
We were short on time as our website had been down for a long time. So we went for the tool method. We simply copied our domain name and ran it through a DNS Lookup tool. The tool instantly displayed all the records configured in the DNS settings for our site’s domain.
And this is where the game changes, and we spotted the issue.
How Performing a DNS Lookup Helped Us Spot the Issue?
Remember, we told you we made changes to the NS and A records during our website migration. When we performed a DNS Lookup, and it showed all the records, including the ones we changed, we matched them with the required ones.
And that is where we captured the mistake. And that mistake was a typo error in the A record, which is pointing the website to the wrong IP address. That is why, when a public user accesses a website, they are directed to the wrong IP address, and it appears as if the website is down.
We immediately corrected this typo by updating the A record and got our website back online for public users. But you know what? After correcting the records, our site was still inaccessible to some regions of the world. And the thing was understandable.
Whenever a change to a DNS record is made, the newly added record can take up to 48 hours to propagate globally. So, we started waiting for the records to propagate early, and happily, they were propagated globally in less than 48 hours.
How do we know that? Well, throughout all this time, we’ve been checking the DNS propagation status by running our domain through a DNS propagation checker.
This tool helped us by showing real-time data on which records configured for our domain are being propagated to which regions of the world.
Bottom Line – What This Experience Taught Us?
This whole experience taught us that even a small DNS mistake can take a website offline. A single wrong IP was enough to break our site for public visitors, even though everything looked fine on our side.
A quick DNS lookup could have saved us a lot of time. Now, whenever we move a site, update records, or switch hosting, we always verify the setup with a DNS lookup tool.
And our suggestion for you is to do the same. A simple record check can help you find the problem, fix the domain, and bring the website back online.