Cannot Access Externally Hosted Domain from Internal Network
Here's my setup:
I have an internal network with the domain corp.domain.com. I have a DNS server with two zones; corp.domain.com and domain.com. The corp.domain.com zone has the A records for all of our servers and workstations. The domain.com zone has the A records for www, mail, and other subdomains. We can access all of our subdomains that exist on local servers via our web browsers with no issues.
The problem is with our website. It is not hosted locally, but through GoDaddy. I have A records under the domain.com zone pointing to the IP address provided by GoDaddy. The A records I have setup are www and *.
The website is a Wordpress site, and the only way I have been able to get it to "somewhat" work is to change the Wordpress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com. After making this change, I can enter www.domain.com in my browser and it will take me to my externally hosted site, however entering just domain.com will not.
I performed an nslookup on my DNS server and here's the results:
I have an internal network with the domain corp.domain.com. I have a DNS server with two zones; corp.domain.com and domain.com. The corp.domain.com zone has the A records for all of our servers and workstations. The domain.com zone has the A records for www, mail, and other subdomains. We can access all of our subdomains that exist on local servers via our web browsers with no issues.
The problem is with our website. It is not hosted locally, but through GoDaddy. I have A records under the domain.com zone pointing to the IP address provided by GoDaddy. The A records I have setup are www and *.
The website is a Wordpress site, and the only way I have been able to get it to "somewhat" work is to change the Wordpress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com. After making this change, I can enter www.domain.com in my browser and it will take me to my externally hosted site, however entering just domain.com will not.
I performed an nslookup on my DNS server and here's the results:
> nslookup domain.com
Server: localhost
Address: ::1
Server: domain.com.corp.domain.com
Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP address for external site)ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Since it isn't returning the external IP, that indicates there is an issue with your DNS setup. I'd recheck the record setup.
ASKER
I double-checked my DNS records, and I actually didn't have a blank A record for the external site (it was setup as a name server). I added the blank A record and it didn't make a difference.
A bit more information about accessing my website:
The Wordpress site I'm working on is not at the root of my web host. It is in a separate folder (www.domain.com/newsite/). My currently active website is located at the root. If I go to http://domain.com/newsite/, it will redirect me to http://www.domain.com/newsite/ and work just fine (since that is how it is configured in Wordpress. With my current site, I can go to http://www.domain.com and it loads, but it will not load if I go to http://domain.com. The current site is a PHP site, not Wordpress.
A bit more information about accessing my website:
The Wordpress site I'm working on is not at the root of my web host. It is in a separate folder (www.domain.com/newsite/). My currently active website is located at the root. If I go to http://domain.com/newsite/, it will redirect me to http://www.domain.com/newsite/ and work just fine (since that is how it is configured in Wordpress. With my current site, I can go to http://www.domain.com and it loads, but it will not load if I go to http://domain.com. The current site is a PHP site, not Wordpress.
Did you verify the new record via nslookup?
ASKER
I did. After adding the record, the address is showing up as it should with nslookup.
Then this is much more likely an issue on the web server. The next thing I'd do is watch the network traffic with something like the developer tools built into new versions of IE or the firebug extension in Firefox. Actually see if the browser is hitting your site and if the redirect is working as expected.
ASKER
Well, it appears to be working now.
I performed an ipconfig /dnsflush and cleared my browser cache, but it still wasn't working. I then pointed the root to the newsite folder within Wordpress to make the new site active, and domain.com still wasn't working. Just to see what happens, I changed the Wordpress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) from within Wordpress back to domain.com, and it is now working just fine (as domain.com and www.domain.com).
So I assume the issue was not having the blank A record within my DNS, but it just didn't update right away. Thank you for all of your help Cliff!
I performed an ipconfig /dnsflush and cleared my browser cache, but it still wasn't working. I then pointed the root to the newsite folder within Wordpress to make the new site active, and domain.com still wasn't working. Just to see what happens, I changed the Wordpress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) from within Wordpress back to domain.com, and it is now working just fine (as domain.com and www.domain.com).
So I assume the issue was not having the blank A record within my DNS, but it just didn't update right away. Thank you for all of your help Cliff!
ASKER
When I perform an nslookup as you described, here's the results:
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