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Andrew AngellFlag for United States of America

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Problem with domain name and hosting account..??

I've got the domain name bstock.net hosted with Network Solutions.  I have a hosting account with cPanel setup for this at HostGator.  The IP address of the HG server is 50.87.152.104, and I have updated the A record in DNS for bstock.net to point to this IP address.  When I ping bstock.net I get that IP address as expected.  

I'm able to FTP to the HG hosting account using bstock.net as the host and the file makes it there as expected.  I can see it in File Manager in cPanel.  

For some reason, though, when I browse www.bstock.net I'm getting this default ads site as if the domain was parked or something like that.  I can't figure out what's going on.  

Any info on how I can resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!
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Brett Danney
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Either you do not have a webpage to respond to http requests or you do but the default page has not been set. If it has been set I would contact network solutions, they need to resolve the issue.
The 'www' is not automatic.  It normally needs to be added as a CNAME record in your DNS.  More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types
Like this
NAME                    TYPE   VALUE
--------------------------------------------------
bstock.net             A           123.456.789.23
www.bstock.net    CNAME  bstock.net.

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I'll try adding a CNAME record, but shouldn't http://bstock.net (without the www) work even without that, though?
No, bstock.net and www.bstock.net are two different names technically. You can add a www. record and point it to the same IP address as bstock.net then they will both resolve. However that does not mean the website will load for both, you will need to set the hostheader for that to happen.
When I try to add a CNAME it tells me the A record already exists for the alias, and when I check A records I can see that www.bstock.net is one of the default values in there.  That's where I set the IP address to the address of the HostGator hosting account.  

Again, when I ping either www.bstock.net or bstock.net it hits the correct IP, and I can FTP to the hosting account just fine using the domain name, but actually browsing it in a browser is giving me that ads page.
Is there no FAQ you could check to make sure you have pointed the DNS to the correct IP address?
If the DNS wasn't pointed to the correct IP I wouldn't be able to FTP to it using the domain.  

From the HostGator account for bstock.net, I created a new FTP account.  From a client, I can use bstock.net as the host as well as the un/pw I created from the bstock.net cPanel and it all works just fine.  Then I can open up File Manager from cPanel and see the files in there as expected, so all of that is working as expected.

The actual site in a browser, though, is loading this other thing.  I've never seen anything like this before.
You see ftp. and www. can point to two completely different IP addresses even if bstock.net is right.
Also when did you make these IP changes? They will not be instant and may take 24 to 48 hours to update on all DNS servers.
Yes, I understand that.  I'm not using ftp.bstock.net, I'm just using bstock.net.  

When I ping them it hits the correct IP, so I can see that DNS is doing what I expect as far as hitting the correct IP address goes.  

Here's a screenshot of the DNS A record setup in NetSol...

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Ok, what happens if you try connect to a page that you know works like:
www.btstock.net/test.php
You probably need to setup DNS on your hosting because your hosting IP address is for their server and not your website.  It appears that they are using "name-based hosting" where one IP address is used for many websites.
SagiEDoc:  I get the same default looking ads page no matter what subdirectory or file I try to hit whether it actually exists or not.

DaveBaldwin:  I was thinking the same thing, but the web server is a VPS with multiple cPanel's setup for each site that is configured on it.  I've never seen an instances where a hosting account was configured with cPanel/WHM but it didn't actually setup the virtual server for it in Apache vhosts.  

I guess I can double check all of that as I'm not the one who personally configured the hosting account on this server, but it just seems odd everything else in this cPanel would be functioning exactly as expected.  

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the server directly.  All I have is the cPanel login, and I'm not seeing anything in cPanel that would let me edit or configure the site in Apache vhosts.
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Andrew Angell
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Funny how that works...
The answers I received didn't point me to the nameservers.  My client figured that out and got it resolved on his own.