Custom domain not transferred correctly

Support
1

Hi,

Yesterday, I transfered my custom domain to my Netlify site (koimpex-dev.netlify.com). I did this as instructed in your documentation:

  1. All dns records were copied correctly;
  2. The nameserververs were switched to the one provided by Netlify in my domain registrar’s UI.

However, I am currently seeing the following message (for the last 8 hours):

This site can’t be reached
koimpex.com.mk’s server IP address could not be found.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

I already checked the existing topics, but all the suggestions there didn’t help (This site can’t be reached after adding custom domain).

What may be the problem?

Best,
Nikola

2

Hi, @koevskin, and welcome to the Netlify community site. :smiley:

There are several possible things that could have happened. Those possibilities include:

  • delays in DNS records changes due to time to live (TTL) values
  • the new NS records were added to existing NS records instead of replacing them

Or it could be something else. I don’t know what was (as there is no historical record). I can only see how things are configured now.

Note, the DNS for this domain is currently not configured according to our recommendations.

I’m showing the site is using external DNS not Netlify DNS at this time. This itself is correct and supported. Both external DNS and Netlify DNS can be used to connect a domain to a site at Netlify.

However, with the external DNS there are two key things we recommend:

  1. Make the primary domain the www subdomain.

The apex/root domain is the primary domain at for this site currently. This is not something we recommend unless you are using Netlify DNS for the site.

As this site is using external DNS, this configuration will route all website traffic to a single IP address near San Francisco. Even for visitors inside the U.S.A., this is not an ideal configuration as people on the east coast should be directed to an east coast server. Right now all visitors go to a single IP address instead of using our global CDN. We have many CDN nodes within the U.S.A. and globally throughout the world but your site only used a single node on the west coast.

  1. The www subdomain should be a CNAME record pointing to the site subdomain under netlify.com.

So, the DNS record should be similar to this:

www.koimpex.com.mk.	3600	IN	CNAME	koimpex-dev.netlify.com.

However, what I see instead is this:

www.koimpex.com.mk.	14400	IN	CNAME	koimpex.com.mk.
koimpex.com.mk.		900		IN	A		104.198.14.52

This will again send all traffic to a single IP address for a system near San Francisco. Again, the our full CDN will not be used.

If you use the CNAME record for koimpex-dev.netlify.com and make the www subdomain primary domain in the site settings at Netlify, this will greatly improve the site performance for all visitors and especially for anyone not living on west coast of the U.S.A.

If there are any questions about this, please let us know.