Having trouble accessing your website?
Perhaps you can access it on your computer by your friend can’t?
If you’ve checked for an IP block and still can’t access, it’s possible you have some DNS issues.
DNS issues can be extremely frustrating and they can create some pretty big problems for your website.
The good news is they’re not that hard to fix as long as you know what you’re looking for.
Check Your DNS Health Report
One of the first things you should do if you’re having trouble accessing your website is check the health of your DNS records.
Last summer we released a free tool called DNS Hero where you can check this instantly (for free).
If you see any red error messages, you know something isn’t right, and needs correcting.
Check Your Name Servers
If you’re using our Reseller or VPS hosting packages, it’s likely you’re using your own white-labeled private name servers.
Misconfigured name servers is one of the top DNS errors we see inside our support department.
When you setup private name servers you have to do two things:
- Register the name servers at your domain registrar
- Setup correct A records and NS entries on your hosting package
Step 1 is very important. It is what binds your domain to the name servers. For security, this has to be done at the current domain registrar that holds the domain.
If you registered your domain with NameHero we make this extremely easy for you.
If your domain is registered with another registrar, such as GoDaddy, you have to follow their tutorials to set them up.
A lot of customers will confuse step 1 with step 2. They actually both have to be completed for DNS to function properly.
Step 2, you just need to setup the correct entires inside the DNS zone file. If your domain is registered with us on sign-up, our order processing team automatically does all of this for you!
Modify Your DNS Zone File In WHM
A lot of times you can use DNS Hero to pinpoint the error and then correct it by modifying the DNS zone record in Web Host Manager.
Simply login to Web Host Manager and click on Edit DNS Zone:
From here, you can select the problematic domain and make the proper corrects.
Modify Your DNS Zone File In cPanel
If you’re a basic web hosting customer or trying to help one of your customers, you can also access these records inside of cPanel -> Zone Editor:
Just like in Web Host Manager, this will bring up a screen where you can see all the DNS entires for your domain and can modify/add to correct a problem.
How To Troubleshoot DNS Issues
I’ve filmed a tutorial on our official YouTube channel where I go through all these troubleshooting tips to help make DNS easy:
One of the first things our support department does during investigating an issue is check your DNS report.
Check yours today and make sure everything looks good!
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