Troubleshooting: DNS Failing To Propagate
The Domain Name System controls many aspects of web hosting. If these records are not setup properly they have the potential to affect your website and mail, so it’s important to have the right settings configured. You can see how to manage your DNS records in our article Adding and Editing DNS Records. This article highlights common reasons as to why records do not propagate and provides tools to assist in troubleshooting.
Nameservers Are Not Propagating
You can use a helpful online tool to determine where your name servers are pointed to at https://www.whatsmydns.net/. When using this tool if you see that your name servers are not coming up, usually it is due to a few reasons:
- Nameservers were not set at the registrar (see Changing Your Website’s Nameservers).
- The domain is expired.
- The domain has a hold placed on it due to verification.
Contact your domain registrar’s support team to determine the exact cause and solution.
DNS Records Are Not Propagating
If your nameservers are already propagating then this will enable you to have the records propagate as well. When using https://www.whatsmydns.net/ if you are seeing that a particular record is not propagating you will want to determine where the record was edited at. If your nameservers are not pointed to that DNS host (see Where Is My DNS Hosted?), then records will not be affected. To make any edits to your records you must edit them where your nameservers are pointed to.