Error in browser when loading: “This Site can’t be reached”
Message in Netlify Domain Management: “Awaiting Netlify DNS”
Summary: I’m a musician, this is my official website. My custom domain WAS working. For my latest release I’ve teamed up with a PR company who setup a subdomain using CNAME: music.stonehocker.ca which directs to a different host (toneden.io). I don’t have access to the Toneden domain management.
The register.ca DNS name servers are set to: dns1.name-services.com (dns1 → dns5)
Through Netlify forums I’ve found that they should be: * dns1.p06.nsone.net (dns1 → dns4)
If I change the name servers at register.ca I can make my apex domain stonehocker.ca work, but then music.stonehocker.ca doesn’t work, and vise versa.
Currently, it is most important that music.stonehocker.ca works, so I’ve left the name servers set to dns1.name-services.com
I assume that this means I can’t have both sites working at the same time because they need different name servers? I don’t understand DNS enough to comprehend this, and I don’t know what to ask my PR company regarding their Toneden settings. Hopefully I’ve provided enough info, any help or direction would be appreciated.
Thank you - Mark Stonehocker
Domain → Name Server → DNS Records → (your other bits and pieces, sites, mail servers etc)
Whatever ‘Name Server’ you have set is where you’re saying “I will set my DNS records here”.
If you have it pointed at name-services.com you would be setting your DNS records there.
If you have it pointed at dns*.p06.nsone.net you would be setting your DNS records at Netlify.
Provided your DNS records are then correct, things will work.
If you switched to using Netlify’s DNS, you would need to ensure you duplicated over whatever records the subdomain site needs to function (e.g. The CNAME record you mention).
If you use the other Name Server then you need to set the appropriate DNS records to serve the Netlify site in that location. The details for that can be found here:
Thank you for the response! This definitely inspired me to keep digging into changing the DNS records. So now I have:
deleted my DNS Zone (to start again)
under DNS Records → “add new record” → I added the name-services.com records, all 5 of them.
under “Production Domains”, it now says “Awaiting Netlify DNS”.
under “Domains” tab, at the top of the page, it says "stonehocker.ca Registered through an external provider.
Now I’m just waiting to see if it will propagate in the next 24 hrs, I am hopeful. Thanks. - Mark
Hello Melvin,
I’ve found that if I follow the Netlify directions and re-direct to the Netlify nsone.com DNS Zone, yes my site does begin to work; however, a separate sub-domain site (music.stonehocker.ca) handled by my PR company stops working.
I assume it is because the sub-domain site needs the name-services.com DNS entries? Either way, the sub-domain site is currently involved in a major marketing campaign and I can’t afford to have that site go down.
That’s why I felt my best option was to try to force the Netlify site to use the name-services.com DNS Zone.
Currently, my site (stonehocker.ca) hasn’t started working again anyway. Under Domain Management it still reports that it is “Awaiting Netlify DNS”.
So it looks like (if I’m understanding this properly) my Netlify site will only allow my custom domain if it is using the Netlify DNS Zone, I’ve yet to decide if I should leave the site down until the marketing campaign is over or look for other options.
Thanks for all the help though, I do appreciate it.
@Mark_Stonehocker I don’t believe that to be the case, since it’s quite possible to have your DNS elsewhere as per the documentation I previously linked.
I saw @Melvin’s post yesterday and didn’t want to wade back in against Netlify support, but I strongly suspect that he may have missed the additional complexity of the subdomain being managed elsewhere, and under normal circumstances it can be easiest when people point their name servers to Netlify and as per the docs:
Netlify offers the option to handle DNS management for you. This enables advanced subdomain automation and deployment features, and ensures that your site uses our CDN for the apex domain as well as subdomains like www.
But it’s not a requirement, as per the other documentation:
If you’ve assigned an externally registered domain to your site, and you don’t want to use Netlify DNS, you need to configure your external DNS provider to point your domain to Netlify.
Hey Nathanmartin,
I scoured through that documentation again and found I had my external DNS provider doing a URL redirect to my Netlify site.
So I changed it to an A record as per the doc(since my provider didn’t have the flattened CNAME option), pointing to Netlify’s load balancer IP address: 75.2.60.5
I changed both the @ and www records to the 75.2.60.5
Gotta wait the allotted time, hopefully it helps.
Thanks for the reply!
Just gotta update, IT WORKS! Thank you very much.
Both my site and the PR site are working. It looks like it needed the A record updated to the load balancer IP with my external DNS provider and probably also the DNS Zone update on the the Netlify side.
I’m happy. - Mark