my new Google website--problems and questions!

[Celebration]

I've been working hard on my new Google website. I spent an entire day figuring out how to attach two custom web addresses to the website. From my old website, which was a complete mess, I directed that name to redirect to one of the two new names. That is just a temporary fix. All worked well, both on my iPhone and laptop. I could reach the website with all three addresses. No problems, until today. Today none of the addresses worked on my iPhone, and only one of them worked on my Laptop.

I hadn't changed any of my Google settings, nor had I changed any settings at my web registrar or Host Monster, where I had my old website. Just all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever they just stopped working. Plus it is strange that one of them would work, and not the other, but only on the laptop. It sounds like a Google issues. I am out of town and don't have the links to check the web registrar place I use. In fact, at this point I have forgotten the name of it. But I obviously haven't changed anything there.

Is this a common issues? Does Google not have its act together? Am I missing something? Anyone else here ever dealt with an issue like this? I admit that I am not exactly experienced in all of this. I was really proud of myself for getting it all right in the first place. Everything has been fine for over a month, until now.

Any thoughts?

[Celebration]

1. I remember it is mydomain.com

I wonder if they screwed up somehow. Has nobody else had this happen to their website?

[limpyhobbler]

2. Was your old web host also hosting your DNS service but then you stopped

paying the bill or canceled the service and it took 30 days for the old web host to shut off the DNS service? That's a not uncommon hiccup about 30 days after moving web hosts. You may have updated the DNS entries at the old web host, but if you stop paying them it will break.

You might want to check your DNS settings starting at your domain name registrar. Usually you need to provide the registrar with the names of a couple DNS servers. If they are still listing some DNS servers managed by your old web host and you don't pay that old web host anymore, it can break similar to what you describe.

The ISP for your laptop could have been caching exactly one IP address for your new web host in its own servers and the time you checked, explaining the inconsistent DNS resolution between the laptop and the iPhone. Or it could have been cached in the laptop's DNS cache for the same result.

Maybe?

[Celebration]

3. Thanks, but

I am all paid up. In fact I am overpaying right now because I paid in advance. I thought about the cache but that can't be it I don't think. I actually added a Facebook badge to the web page yesterday and it shows up on the page.

I guess I will have to deal with this when I get home. This is the weirdest thing.

Let's see . The old domain name at Hostmonster points to one of the new domain names. It is redirecting because I see the name changing. That's the one that doesn't work at all. There is simply a blank page that comes up. Nothing says they can't find the page. The other name works only in the laptop. I did check with my domain at least to determine that both names are taken. So they dont have any payment issue. And google (my web host) has them listed still. I'll check the settings at My Domain when I get home but I shouldn't have to because I didn't change them. So frustrating. Well it would be worse if google had lost my website. Now I am going to save all my pages. Getting paranoid and not trusting the cloud.

[Celebration]

4. still not home yet but I did figure out one thing

For the domain name that is working on the laptop, the reason that I wasn't getting it on the iPhone was because I wasn't typing in www before the domain name. Now, I shouldn't have to and I know I need to deal with this with MyDomain people. The domain name that is not working I am pretty sure I did not have to put in www, because I never do on my iPhone, and I could access it, until I couldn't. And I entered the same information for both addresses. Go figure!!

[Celebration]

5. got it straightened out yesterday

When I checked the DNS settings of the name that didn't work, there weren't any. I have no idea why they were dropped when I didn't do anything to them. But since I still also had the other issue of needing to use the www, I called customer support.

They guided me through a redirect method rather than changing the CNAME, which they said was not as easy. I really hadn't wanted a redirect, but there was a "stealth" way to do it, whereby it wouldn't change the url to the Google sites URL, so I went with it. I erased the CNAME for the other one, and supposedly they changed to the redirect (called "pointer" method). The customer service person did all this for me, but fortunately told me enough for me to be able to fix it when his method didn't take! (mostly because there was a space in there where it shouldn't be!!!)

All was well until this morning, until for some reason "stealth" for one of the names was lost, and it showed the Google sites name. Good grief. I tried to change it back, but for two hours it resisted, over and over again. I checked awhile back and it was back on stealth.

I'm going to have to keep watching this and keep MyDomain password and customer service number handy at all times. Since it worked okay for a month, I am hoping this will last at least as long (preferably longer).