Question about a problem with web site?

mar122999 · March 22nd, 2005, 06:43 PM

I just built a web site for a customer of mine (re-built her old one) and sometimes, she stills pulls up the old web site instead of the new one. I went into her domain name registar's admin page and changed the DNS servers to piont to the new hosting account, but sometimes, she stills pulls up the old one. Well, here are some facts:

-I have never pulled up the old site (I have tried pulling up the site on mulitple PCs and always got the new one). Have tried this hundreds of times.

-I checked her hosts folder and it does not have any listing for her old web sites ip address.

-One time when I was over there, I downloaded a version of Mozilla Firefox to see if it was a browser problem, and it worked fine (The new web site pulled up). But when I tried IE, it brought the old one up. Well, I deleted temp files for IE and the problem seemed to fix itself.

I don't know what the problem is, she pulls up the old one every once in a while and she is getting kinda aggrivated. I explained to her that it is probably something to do with her computer. She them tells me that other people (not sure how many) have been pulling up the old one also. I don't know what to do except maybe re-inserting the new hosting address in the DNS admin page??? Any help on what could be causing this?

elroy · March 22nd, 2005, 06:52 PM

Are people getting the old website through search engines?
My wife sells on the web and sometimes items she sold 6-12 months earlier come up via search engines. Customers contact her and want to buy an item that was sold a year ago. I would assume it is because they are cached on the search engines servers. But I don't have any idea how to resolve the problem.

large_nostril · March 22nd, 2005, 07:27 PM

When was the DNS changed? Sometimes it takes a while for it to "propagate" and depending on the location of the user they may not experience the change for some time.

It's also possible that it's a caching issue. You should make sure that IE's alternate cache is cleared as well. You can find this cache on a WinXP machine at "C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5" and then in sub-folders with seemingly random names, like "8RGBYB0J". Delete those and see if it helps in IE.

You might also want to try pinging the website and see what you get as a path. If you give me the website domain I could do a couple hundred times in a minute.

And elroy's right about the search engine thing. Some search engines will point to IP addresses rather than domain names. This is a really stupid method considering it doesn't even do what they're trying to do, which is prevent people from having multiple listing for the exact same site.

My guess is it's probably just a caching issue.

mar122999 · March 22nd, 2005, 09:32 PM

I will check the cache. Also, just some more information, the website is not really promoted (optimized) on search engines so I doubt that it is people from different states. It is mainly an informative site that she uses for people only in our city.

BTW, how do you ping multiple times quickly so I can see if the IP possibly changes out of ....maybe a thousand pings??

jkrohn · March 22nd, 2005, 09:39 PM

It should never change if the request is from the same DNS server.

That being said do the following:
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns

For the ping do ping -n X hostname

Jkrohn

mar122999 · March 22nd, 2005, 09:50 PM

do you think that I could also set her web site in the hosts file as "ip address"......... then "domain name". This may make the browser go to the correct IP everytime instead of only sometimes. This could provide a quick fix and maybe keep her quite for a while. I don't believe it can cause any harm (maybe if the hosting company changes or so). Also, do you know if the website IP address ever changes or is it usually static?

mar122999 · March 23rd, 2005, 02:30 PM

Do you think that I could add the website to her "hosts" file?

large_nostril · March 23rd, 2005, 03:38 PM

Theoretically that should work. The only thing wrong with that is if she ever changed hosts or had the domain point to a different IP, she'd be sent to the current IP.

Are the "new" site files being hosted on the same server as the "old" site was? Some servers double cache files which is good for backups but could cause issues like this one.

mar122999 · March 23rd, 2005, 05:36 PM

No. The new website is on a whole different hosting plan with someone else.