Strange problem with my domain

Hello There, I'm experiencing a strange problem with my domain. I've called GoDaddy multiple times and they've assured me they've done everything in their power to fix the problem, but they have not been successful in doing so. My site hosted with BigCartel and they were not able to help me. The problem is that when I type in my domain, capitalclothinguk.co.uk without the WWW, I sometimes get a message saying the connection has been reset, the strange thing is that when I try again it will work again and the problem will not reoccur. When there has been a gap in traffic the error will occur again and to fix it temporary you type in the address again.

Wondering if anyone here can help?

 

Reset the dns entries, there might be a misconfiguration. Your host provider should fix it for you.

 

You have some sort of redirect that's breaking - ie, when I first type the address (or copy it from your post) and paste it in the address-bar, I get a "the connection was reset" error - but when I reload, or paste/hit enter again, it redirects to www. - which means that somewhere you have a redirect, either in a .htaccess-file, or as a CNAME-rule on your host. That rule doesn't kick in quick enough, or it tries to redirect too many times, or it times out - at first. On secondary attempts, it seems to be working, redirecting as it should. Do you use external resources on your site? CDN-network, or something?

 

There is a DNS issue here. capitalclothinguk.co.uk (without www) goes to IP address 184.168.221.21. With the www it goes to IP 66.209.77.199 (capitaluk.bigcartel.com). dnsstuff.com reports there is a CNAME on your www. I see no reason why you cannot use A Records for both the www and non-www versions of your domain instead of a CNAME. I do.

Ideally, they should both go to the same IP address and it is a good idea for you to pick one version of the domain (with or without the www) and use only that, redirecting requests from the one you are not using to the other that you are using.

 

How well do you understand DNS? Here's a high-level intro to the different configurations you should get familiar with:

https://urpad.net/blog/how-to-configure-dns-settings/

You might also do better to consider moving to a different type of hosting provider. The big web hosting companies like GoDaddy aren't exactly known for taking great care of customers or providing service in a timely fashion. Are you comfortable enough to manage your own server administration?

 

It might be some dns issue, a dns record might be missing. Is it a problem just for you or you are getting complaints from others too?

 

Leaf DNS shows you have no issues with your domain: http://leafdns.com/index.cgi?testid=9BBEE506

However, when I use it with www. it shows this error: "The parent nameservers do not have your nameservers listed": http://leafdns.com/index.cgi?testid=9E281EB0

Look into that issue and/or the one popsicle suggested.

 

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your help. I've solved the problem... sort of. I linked the A name to the ip of my hosting and set the CNAME as the link to my hosting, meaning there are no longer any redirects. Godaddy have been useless! I must of called around about 12 times regading the problem, as well as contacting them through Twitter. They basically told me the problem didn't exist. Most of the staff I talked to seemed very, very inexperienced. I am no expert on domains, DNS ect but I felt as if I knew more about DNS then them. Some tried to say it was Big Cartel's fault, which is not true at all, when the issue was occuring the redirect didn't even attempt to contact Big Cartel's server, there were even a few which, despite not being able to fix the problem with my domain, tried selling me domain names which I had no need for, like I'm going to purchase more services from them after the problems I've had. I realise that having two versions of the same site is bad for SEO but I'd prefer to have a site which actually functioned properly. Clearly there's some sort of problem with their redirect servers, I am sure there is a simple explaination to this problem but I'm afraid that the people I talked to through the phone had no experience or knowledge in DNS. I feel like complaining but I don't see the point in all honesty.

 

Sucks. I'd say move to a new provider - possibly even a VPS. If you can find a Managed VPS service, you'll probably be dealing with far fewer headaches and, as your site grows, you can scale your hosting plan to meet your needs. Part of why I hate Shared Hosting so much is that I've always had horrible luck ending up with clowns who can't configure my DNS or my site is down 30% of the time or my email send/receive would never work. The list goes on and on. VPS costs a bit more (especially managed services) but a good, reliable provider is totally worth it.