Site is down - DNS appears to resolve but site does not load

[aninchat]

Hi, my site is down. DNS appears to resolve fine but the site does not load for any visitor. The site is theasciiconstruct.netlify.app with a custom domain theasciiconstruct.com.

[nathanmartin]

@aninchat I see a Wix holding page:

Make sure to follow the guide here:

Configure external DNS for a custom domain

Netlify’s Load Balancer IP Address of 75.2.60.5 is there… but the others are IP’s for Wix.

[aninchat]

This is weird. So, I had this domain hosted on Wix for a long time, and eventually migrated to Netlify. This has been working for over a year until my domain expired and I renewed it a few days back. The site was back up for a day and then it went down again.

Let me follow the instructions in the article article again.

[Melvin]

Hi @aninchat,

I’m showing you have a DNS Zone here:

Netlify App

… and that the Zone is inactive:

dig theasciiconstruct.com NS +trace | tail -n 6
;; Received 455 bytes from 192.48.79.30#53(j.gtld-servers.net) in 57 ms

theasciiconstruct.com.	86400	IN	NS	ns10.wixdns.net.
theasciiconstruct.com.	86400	IN	NS	ns11.wixdns.net.
;; Received 98 bytes from 216.239.36.100#53(ns10.wixdns.net) in 29 ms

You can follow our Support Guide here:

[Support Guide] How to detect and fix inactive Netlify DNS zones

Last reviewed by Netlify Support - August, 2023 What is an “inactive Netlify DNS zone”? First, it would help to define the term “DNS zone”. Quoting wikipedia, it says: A DNS zone is any distinct, contiguous portion of the domain name space in the Domain Name System (DNS) for which administrative responsibility has been delegated to a single manager. To paraphrase, a DNS zone is a collection of all the DNS records for a production domain. When you add production domains to Netlify DNS we c…

The guide walks through what issues an inactive DNS zone can cause, and the solutions for fixing.

I do see that you have External DNS configured properly:

host theasciiconstruct.com
theasciiconstruct.com has address 75.2.60.5
theasciiconstruct.com mail is handled by 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
theasciiconstruct.com mail is handled by 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
theasciiconstruct.com mail is handled by 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
theasciiconstruct.com mail is handled by 40 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.
theasciiconstruct.com mail is handled by 50 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.

host www.theasciiconstruct.com
www.theasciiconstruct.com is an alias for theasciiconstruct.netlify.app.
theasciiconstruct.netlify.app has address 44.217.161.11
theasciiconstruct.netlify.app has address 44.219.53.183
theasciiconstruct.netlify.app has IPv6 address 2600:1f18:16e:df00::64
theasciiconstruct.netlify.app has IPv6 address 2600:1f18:2489:8200::c8

Since you want to use External DNS, you should remove the DNS Zone here.

[eric45]

It’s strange. I had my website on Wordpress, then moved it to Netlify, and it worked fine for over a year. But after renewing my domain a few days ago, the site was up for a day, then went down again.

[nathanmartin]

@eric45 When you say you ‘renewed your domain’, did it ‘expire’ at any stage?
If so, it’s entirely possible Wix adjusted values on you, likely to switch it to their holding page.

If you were previously using Netlify DNS, (not Wix DNS), then you would set up the Name Servers as per:
https://docs.netlify.com/domains-https/netlify-dns/#add-a-domain-you-own
https://docs.netlify.com/domains-https/netlify-dns/delegate-to-netlify/

If you’re using Wix’s DNS then you would set it up as per the documentation I originally linked:
https://docs.netlify.com/domains-https/custom-domains/configure-external-dns/