Just Transferred Hosting, Site not showing changes Unless www. in front of url

I recently purchased an old static html site. I set up hosting through hostgator and paid someone to upload all the files. When I went to make changes to the site, the changes will not show unless I put http://www. in front of the url. If I just enter xyz.com without the http://www. it shows the old copy. I also tried to upload a new page and it only shows with the www. I was told by my webdesigner that it may have something to do with the htaccess file? There was not a file by that name so I asked the old owner for a copy and uploaded it but no change. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Check to make sure you have an A record set up for the domain name without the www as well as with the www. And make sure they both point to the same IP address--the new one.

Also, HostGator may use caching of static files. Some cPanel hosts are doing that. There should be a caching setting in your control panel. Other than that, it is hard to say what the problem is without knowing the URL and checking out the DNS settings.

As far as the .htaccess thing, that would more or less involve issuing a redirect to the www or non-www so only one version of the domain is used. Which is Google's recommendation and a good recommendation overall. So you should pick only one version to display (with or without www) and redirect your visitors to the chosen one.

Make sure you select to show hidden files in your cPanel. I think it hides certain files like .htaccess by default. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

Or probably the browser still caching the old version of the http:/ (without www). In that case, refresh the browser by pressing Ctrl+F5 (doesn't work on XFCE/Xubuntu) or Ctrl+R. I could be wrong though.

 

Indeed, it looks like you see cached version