DNS not changing to Netlify

Support
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1

Hi

I have a customer who has added a CNAME record and also the 4x DNS records to their Domain register, but after 24 hours the domain waldoltd.com has not started to point to my Netlify site https://projectwaldo.netlify.com/.
what should I check next in order to troubleshoot ?
any help greatly appreciated

Gary

2

Hi, Gary. Welcome to our community site.

The CNAME record is part of the manual configuration instructions for custom domain names. Adding the four DNS records is part of Managed DNS configuration.

These are the two different methods of connecting a custom domain name to a site at Netlify. Those are either or instructions - so one or the other, not both, should be done.

I use dig for all the DNS lookups below which is my recommended tool for troubleshooting DNS issues.

At this time, the DNS servers are not pointing to ones Netlify controls:

$ dig waldoltd.com NS  +noall +answer

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> waldoltd.com NS +noall +answer
;; global options: +cmd
waldoltd.com.		21371	IN	NS	ns1060.ui-dns.org.
waldoltd.com.		21371	IN	NS	ns1060.ui-dns.com.
waldoltd.com.		21371	IN	NS	ns1060.ui-dns.biz.
waldoltd.com.		21371	IN	NS	ns1060.ui-dns.de.

I don’t show records for the www or apex/root domain pointing to Netlify either:

$ dig www.waldoltd.com CNAME +noall +answer

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> www.waldoltd.com CNAME +noall +answer
;; global options: +cmd

$ dig waldoltd.com A +noall +answer

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> waldoltd.com A +noall +answer
;; global options: +cmd
waldoltd.com.		3599	IN	A	217.160.0.215

While there is an IP address returned, it the IP address in our documentation (or one we control as an ALIAS record might return various IP addresses).

Would you please let us know which of the two methods above you want to use and which steps have been completed in that process so far?

3

Hi Luke
Thanks for the reply,
Ideally I would just like to use a CNAME record. Unfortunately I don’t currently have access to the domain so any requests are going through their IT department.
I have asked them to reset and I will try and go through adding a CNAME record with them.
Should it be as simple as just adding a new record?

Should it be a CNAME for the www. And an Aname pointing the netlify IP address

4

Yes, a CNAME for www and an an A record for the apex/root domain. The A record for the apex/root domain is one of two options for the apex/root:

To point the root domain at our servers, there are two options. From the manual configuration documentation:

  1. Recommended : Use a DNS provider that supports CNAME flattening, ANAME or ALIAS records for root domains, and alias your root domain to [your-site-name].netlify.com . We recommend using NS1, or Netlify’s built-in DNS for this purpose.
  2. Alternative : Create an A record pointing your root domain to our load balancer’s IP address 104.198.14.52 .

One final note:

  • If using the solution above, in order to use the full CDN most effectively the www subdomain should be made the “primary domain” in the site’s custom domain settings at Netlify (Site Name > Settings > Domain management > Custom domain). Making the A record the primary domain routes all traffic to a single IP address. This is way making the CNAME/www custom domain is important. Using the single IP address does work but doesn’t utilize any geographically distributed CDN nodes for region specific traffic. Using the www subdomain will utilize the full CDN which most often provides the best performance.