Please help with 'Delegate your domain to Netlify'

I am trying to delegate three domains from external providers to Netlify DNS, two from Hover and one from goDaddy. The domains are:

Hover

They either say ’ Waiting on DNS propagation’ (the second two) or ‘We could not provision a Let’s Encrypt certificate for your custom domain.’ (animsg)

The first two have been well over 24 hours and the 3rd a bit less time.

I updated Hover and GoDaddy nameservers with:

Screenshot 2020-07-25 at 02.02.46

I am probably doing something dim but getting a bit desperate now,

Many thanks in advance,
Mike

Hi, @MikeF, did you make changes? I don’t show any of those domains configured here:

For two of those sites, the custom domains isn’t added to the site settings (which is a requirement):

One of the three does have the custom domain added:

The custom domain there is configured to use the same name servers that Netlify DNS uses:

$ whois agepride.com | grep -i "name server"
   Name Server: DNS1.P06.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS2.P06.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS3.P06.NSONE.NET
   Name Server: DNS4.P06.NSONE.NET
Name Server: DNS1.P06.NSONE.NET
Name Server: DNS2.P06.NSONE.NET
Name Server: DNS3.P06.NSONE.NET
Name Server: DNS4.P06.NSONE.NET

However, as mentioned above, there is no DNS zone at Netlify for this domain name:

Netlify App (<- that is a “page not found” for me and the zone isn’t in our database either)

There are two ways to connect a custom domain to Netlify:

In additional to the DNS settings, the custom domain need to be added to the site settings under Site Name > Settings > Domain management > Custom domains.

Would you please let us know which method you are using and/or if there are any questions?

Thanks for responding Luke,

I had to transfer the animsg-5a93c and cherishop-455f1 to a different host as I needed to have them live for this week but would like to be able to transfer them back.

I can’t understand why the agepride(mikenewsite-5a40c) site is not working though, as I set up the custom domain and set the domain to netify DNS. The doucumentation led me to believe that Netlify would do the rest, any ideas?

Thanks, Mike

Hi, @MikeF. I see the custom domain (agepride.com ) added to the site but there is no DNS zone for this domain at Netlify:

Also, the required DNS records for external DNS also do not exist:

$ dig agepride.com A  +noall +answer

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> agepride.com A +noall +answer
;; global options: +cmd
$ dig www.agepride.com CNAME  +noall +answer

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

To summarize, there are two ways to point a custom domain to Netlify:

However, at this time, neither DNS configuration above is working for this custom domain. You’ll need to do one or the other before the custom domain with connect to this Netlify site.

Which method are you trying?

Hi Luke,

I followed the instructions for Netlify DNS. I did the same for agepride before I moved the site to a different host and it just worked (obviously with their DNS settings).

Here is a screenshot of my agepride domain with Hover:

I did get as far as doing the dig lookup but sadly I’m not experienced enough in networking to understand what it means.

Many thanks for your continued help,

Mike

Hi, @MikeF. The first step is to create a new DNS zone for this custom domain here:

The instructions for this can be found here.

Important: When the DNS zone is created check the name servers at they might be different from the ones you configured at Hover.

There are several sets of DNS servers used by Netlify DNS (which are all name servers at NS1.com as our DNS service uses their IaaS DNS services).

The name server domain names look like this where the # in p0# can be any number 1 through 6 (subject to change of course):

dns1.p0#.nsone.net
dns2.p0#.nsone.net
dns3.p0#.nsone.net
dns4.p0#.nsone.net

When a new DNS zone is created, it will get only one of the six sets of four DNS servers to use. This could be the p01 name servers:

dns1.p01.nsone.net
dns2.p01.nsone.net
dns3.p01.nsone.net
dns4.p01.nsone.net

It could be the p06 name servers:

dns1.p06.nsone.net
dns2.p06.nsone.net
dns3.p06.nsone.net
dns4.p06.nsone.net

Which one is assigned is determined when the zone is created and which is picked cannot be controlled.

I’m pointing this out because you’ve used the p06 name servers and those many not end up being the correct name servers once the DNS zone is actually created.

To summarize what is happening, you have pointed your domain to four name servers that don’t know anything about your domain. The solution will be to create a DNS zone for this custom domain at Netlify.

Again, this might then require updating the name servers again at Hover because the ones in the Netlify DNS configuration might be p01 or p04 instead of p06.

Finally, once the DNS zone at Netlify is created and the name servers configured at Hover match the ones in the Netlify DNS zone, there is one more step. The last step is to delete and then add back the custom domains to the site’s custom domain settings here:

Why do you need to delete and re-add the custom domains there?

Because adding those custom domains will trigger the creations of NETLIFY (and possibly NETLIFYv6) type DNS records in the DNS zone to connect the custom domain to our CDN nodes. There is more about these NETLIFY/NETLIFYv6 DNS records here.

​Please let us know if there are any questions or if this doesn’t resolve the issue.

Thanks so very much Luke,

All domains now working and I understand the process a lot better,

Thanks again

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