So you’ve updated your old website – great!
But if you’re stuck staring at your old site even after refreshing your browser window and clearing your cache, there may be an external issue preventing you from seeing your new site. There are a couple of things that may be going on –
- If your site was moved to a new host, your domain may not have been re-pointed yet.
- If your old site was hosted on an in-office server, the old site still on that server may be overriding the outside (new) site from coming in.
- Your ISP (internet service provider) may not flush their DNS often enough, and although the domain has been re-pointed, the new address of your site is not being read by your ISP’s servers, and therefore your computer is stuck receiving old info.
So, how do you remedy the above?
In the case of #1, generally, domain re-points may take 24-48hrs to take effect – so if it’s past 48 hrs, contact the new hosting provider to verify they have re-pointed the domain.
For #2, you can test for this fairly easily – just try to navigate to your site from a computer that is NOT using your office’s internet connection/network (at a coffee shop, or ask someone outside the office to navigate to the site), but still using the same ISP. If that works, you will have to contact your inter-office tech support to have them update their servers/delete the old site.
You also may want to check to see where your IP address is pointing to from your own computer –
Go to Start > Run > enter command > OK
Then, type: ping yourdomain.com & hit ENTER (replace yourdomain.com with the site you’re trying to see, of course)
If you don’t know what to do with the information that comes up after you hit ENTER, you may want to give it to your new hosting provider to help them troubleshoot.
For #3, this can be tested by trying to navigate to your site from a computer that is NOT using the same ISP – this can get a bit trickier, but usually you can find a friend who gets their internet connection through another provider (ISP) and ask them to look at the site. If they can see the new site, but another friend on the same ISP cannot, this is most likely the cause. You will need to contact your ISP and ask them to “flush their DNS”.
Many times, cacheing issues can be solved with the above troubleshooting, and some issues seem to resolve on their own given enough time (the DNS sometimes takes a bit of time to propegate internet-wide – not surprising given the size of the internet today). If you have any other tips/tricks you’d like to share, write us a comment below.