I have been helping a friend with a blog site. The production site is currently running on netlify. The development/draft site is running in a subdomain of my own site. But I decided to purchase a domain name for my friend (2 years for now) and set up the domain/website under my Hostinger account. Thought I’d document what I have done so far.
Though, the DNS propogation is anything but complete. As such Hostinger won’t let me access the site, even when using the IP address they provided. As a matter of fact that IP address takes me to some other site entirely. Will see what happens next 24-48 hours.
Unfortunately I didn’t make the decision to blog about this until after I set up the web site and changed the DNS Zone File. So, this might not be as detailed as I’d like.
Domain Name
I have been using Canhost to register the few domain names I have purchased. But, the web site I have set up for Lynn, is running under my account with Hostinger. I won’t bother going through the process of purchasing a domain name. Though I was relatively lucky in that the name I wanted was available, br….ca.
Add Domain and New Website on Hostinger.com
I logged into my Hostinger account and proceeded to my client home. From there I clicked on ‘Websites’ (top of page).
I then clicked on the box containing “Create or migrate a website”. On the following page I clicked on “Skip, I don’t want a personalized experience”.
On the subsequent page, asking if I wanted to create or migrate a website, I selected ‘Skip, create an empty website’.
On the next page, I selected “Use an existing domain”.
That brought up a small form in which I entered the domain name I had purchased on Canhost. And after submitting that form I got the following page.
Clicking ‘Continue’ brought me to the following page.
Nothing really to view, so ‘Manage Site’ it was. Which took me to the following.
That’s that. Now to add the correct domain name servers to the domain Zone File at Canhost.
Configure Domain Name Servers in Zone File
I logged into Canhost and navigated to my Client Area (menu selection).
I then used the ‘Client Area’ dropdown menu to select “Domains”. Which took me to a page listing my domains. For the appropriate domain, I used the tools dropdown to select ‘Manage Nameservers’.
Which took me to the following page.
Unfortunately I didn’t capture an image of the above page before I altered and saved it. Saving it also reordered the entries for some reason. That said, did you notice the arrow (Note) in the domain confirmation page. It pointed to the nameservers I needed to add in the above dialog. I had to select the button specifying the use of custom domains before I could add the necessary domains.
Then it is a hurry up and wait situation so common in most militaries. 24 hours later, the changed servers have still not propogated around the internet. See below, using DNSChecker to check on nameserver propogation.
Propogation Taking Too Long
Been two days, and still don’t have the proper nameservers across the web. Doesn’t look like anything has changed from the first time I looked.
Went back into my Canhost account and checked what I had for nameservers for my other domain being served on Hostinger. It only had the two Hostinger nameservers in the list. So, I removed the non-Hostinger nameservers from the domain I am working on here. Will see if that improves things in any way.
After doing the above, propogation was pretty much complete within minutes (except Aukland and Shah Alam). And I was able to access the web site. Too which I had transferred the files from the sub-domain of my site that I had been using to host it.
Regenerate Site for New Domain
Which of course had problems. It is a statically generated site (using Hugo). The configuration file had a baseURL parameter pointing to the sub-domain. So all links led to posts on the subdomain. Going to fix the parameter (baseURL = "/"), regenerate and upload the site once again.
Lovely. Now to let Lynn know.