Site changes

I reported earlier that I had problems with emails being blocked from this site. It was due to someone sharing an IP address with my mail and web host who had an infected site. To prevent this issue, I bought a dedicated IP address for my web presence.

Unfortunately, the transition didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. My hosting company, vps.net, uses a “plug-in” that is supposed to update all of the domain name server (DNS) records when one gets a dedicated IP address. It failed half way through, leaving some of my domains changed, some unchanged, and some half changed.

Of course hosting companies always tell you that it can take 24 hours for DNS records to propagate across the Internet, an excuse that covers up any real problems for that period of time. Fortunately, I was more aggressive in following up the DNS problem and caught it after a couple of hours.

Right now things are working here for me; however, there remain two issues. If you visited the site while it was down, your browser went to the old server where there was no site any more, and you got a cPanel starter page. Your browser remembers that page and whenever you go to obamaconspiracy.org, your browser remembers that it should redirect to the starter page. You have to clear your browser cache (and of course if you need to clear your cache, you aren’t reading this helpful hint). The other issue is with email. For some reason, which I don’t understand yet, emails are still going out under the old IP address.

Update:

I have been notified by my hosting company that they have fixed the email IP address. However, the new dedicated IP address I bought was itself listed as having a “poor” reputation at Barracuda Central. At my request, they set the reputation to “normal” and gave it a 30-day grace period.

This completes remediation of all known site issues.

About Dr. Conspiracy

I'm not a real doctor, but I have a master's degree.
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26 Responses to Site changes

  1. scott e says:

    try godaddy, free dedicated server, no problems ever.

  2. American Mzungu says:

    My wife asked me last night why I was grumpy while I was online. “Doc C” is down, I said. She didn’t understand.

  3. I see you have problems with facts outside of the birther realm too. GoDaddy dedicated servers START at $79.99 a month.

    http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx

    scott e: try godaddy, free dedicated server, no problems ever.

  4. CarlOrcas says:

    Morning Doc,

    Thanks for all the work.

    Right now I’ve got Firefox working with a simple dns flush.

    IE 10 is still looking at your old IP address despite repeated flushes both in the program and at the command line.

  5. I hope this is all done. I can hit the site now on both my PC and my iPad.

  6. scott e says:

    Dr. Conspiracy:
    I see you have problems with facts outside of the birther realm too. GoDaddy dedicated servers START at $79.99 a month.

    http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx

    sorry, I’ve been with them for like a decade, I remember them assigning a ds (dv?) to me at no additional charge, but that was years ago.

    I’ve never had one problem, their support is great.
    the site was down for a few hours once, but that was my own fault.

  7. mrheuss says:

    Everything DNS wise looks ok to me – your MX records are pointing at the 217.119.152.99 address the web server is using. You just might be bit by the TTL – 24 hours is a pretty long time to cache the ip address.

    This is a good tool for keeping on eye on this kinda stuff:

    http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=dns:obamaconspiracy.org&run=toolpage

  8. mrheuss says:

    scott e: sorry, I’ve been with them for like a decade, I remember them assigning a ds (dv?) to me at no additional charge, but that was years ago.

    I have nothing but bad to say about GoDaddy hosting. I manage a pretty large number of servers, both physical and virtual, across quite a different providers. GoDaddy has to have the worst support, the highest downtime, and the slowest network of any of the big providers.

    I like their DNS management tools, though.

  9. With the iPHone, I had to go to settings and delete cookies and data, then power-cycle the phone.

  10. MN-Skeptic says:

    Woo-hoo! I can see you again.

    Actually, I could get to your site on my Windows netbook and on my iPod Touch. I just couldn’t get it on my Google Nexus 7 (a 7″ tablet running Android). During the day I mostly use my Nexus. Anyway, I did figure out where the clear cache setting is and now I can see you on all my devices. It is a good thing! 🙂

  11. Unless you’re willing to pay an arm and a leg for somebody like RackSpace, I think it’s the luck of the draw with hosting. I’ve used hosting for decades with everybody from local small town Internet companies to big international companies. What’s good one year is bad another year. One server is rock stable and another with the same company is flaky. The little companies go out of business.

    My current host VPS.NET came highly recommended (a recommendation withdrawn right after I switched), but turned into a monumental hardware disaster and I was down for days. Their servers in other cities were fine. I was with a company called GigaHost (probably not related to the same company today) that was down for weeks after an electrical fire. I don’t know now many emergency generator failures I’ve encountered. Some who have great customer service one year say “we don’t know what’s wrong but it’s probably your fault” to every query a few years later.

    Lots of companies that I might have recommended at one time, I would not recommend today, including:
    Lunarpages.com (support)
    Dreamhost.com (performance)
    VPS.net (stability)

    I started using FatCow.com for some of my sites, but it’s too early to tell how they will turn out. So far things work well and support is attentive and effective. Most start out that way, but “horror story” product reviews abound.

    mrheuss: I have nothing but bad to say about GoDaddy hosting.

  12. H20 guy thought that he crashed your site when he submitted his article. I could buy that. 😆

  13. Maybe he thought I took the site down rather than publish it.

    Reality Check: H20 guy thought that he crashed your site when he submitted his article. I could buy that

  14. Interesting site:

    http://www.whoishostingthis.com

    Type in a web site and they try to tell you who is hosting it. Doesn’t work with this site.

    I see that BirtherReport.com is hosted by GoDaddy.

  15. Slartibartfast says:

    Doc,

    I flushed my cache and still can’t get to your front page, but if I use a link to one of your articles and navigate around your site avoiding the home page everything seems fine. I also stopped getting email notifications from the 1,000 words thread from the 18th until 8:30 tonight, which seems weird to me. Do you think that could be related to your hosting change?

  16. Keith says:

    Slartibartfast: I flushed my cache and still can’t get to your front page,

    Did you try clearing the DNS cache too?

    Windows command prompt: ipconfig /flushdns

  17. Slartibartfast says:

    Keith,

    I’m on a Mac and used “sudo dscacheutil -flushcache” at a terminal (which I believe flushes the DNS cache). I don’t know of any other cache to flush.

    Keith: Did you try clearing the DNS cache too?

    Windows command prompt: ipconfig /flushdns

  18. scott e: I’ve never had one problem, their support is great.

    I tried GoDaddy once. They were the worst, and the greediest.

    Has GoDaddy’s Elephant-Killing CEO Finally Gone Too Far?

    http://gawker.com/5870851/has-godaddys-elephant+killing-ceo-finally-gone-too-far

  19. Keith says:

    Slartibartfast:
    Keith,

    I’m on a Mac and used “sudo dscacheutil -flushcache” at a terminal (which I believe flushes the DNS cache).I don’t know of any other cache to flush.

    sorry I don’t know the mac equivalent of ipconfig /flushdns

    There is the browser cache that holds html pages and the operating system dns cache that holds domain/IP adderess pairs. The DNS cache allow the opsys to not have to go to the net to resolve a domain address you have already visited. If your DNS cache points OCT.org at the old address, you will continue trying to visit the old address.

    edit: try this: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/how-to-clear-dns-cache-in-mac-osx-leopard/

    edit 2: huh, looks like that is what you did already. OK, I’m stumped.

  20. Craig HS says:

    You realise that if you were Orly, you could simply blame all your woes on obot hackers and pimp your paypal button, right? Solves everything!!

  21. Andrew Vrba, PmG says:

    Craig HS:
    You realise that if you were Orly, you could simply blame all your woes on obot hackers and pimp your paypal button, right?Solves everything!!

    Pretty much this.

  22. scott e says:

    misha marinsky: I tried GoDaddy once. They were the worst, and the greediest.

    Has GoDaddy’s Elephant-Killing CEO Finally Gone Too Far?

    http://gawker.com/5870851/has-godaddys-elephant+killing-ceo-finally-gone-too-far

    bob parsons. I was all over that when I heard it. however there is a thing with destruction of crops. big game hunting isn’t my favorite thing. nor am I thrilled with the sexy race car models etc, seems a bit degrading to women.

    however, I came in pretty early and I have had nothing but good experience with them.

  23. Dr Kenneth Noisewater says:

    scott e: however, I came in pretty early and I have had nothing but good experience with them.

    Well when you’re website has 90s era coding to it I’m sure it doesn’t take much for them to keep it active.

  24. Majority Will says:

    Dr Kenneth Noisewater: Well when you’re website has 90s era coding to it I’m sure it doesn’t take much for them to keep it active.

    lmao 😀

  25. scott e says:

    Dr Kenneth Noisewater: Well when you’re website has 90s era coding to it I’m sure it doesn’t take much for them to keep it active.

    you mean php (server sided scripting language) ?
    wait, what’s your website again Dr. Kenneth ?

  26. Suranis says:

    Have you seen his website? You can’t even read a good chunk of the text due to the vaunted “white text on grey photo” and “Black on blue background” colour scheme design. not to mention different fonts and random photos splashed all over it. He has all the design skills of a mayfly on crack.

    And no scott I’m not giving the address like you are angling people to ask for.

    Dr Kenneth Noisewater: Well when you’re website has 90s era coding to it I’m sure it doesn’t take much for them to keep it active.

    Actually it stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, Yes Scott I know the first thing Wikipedia says is “PHP is a server-side scripting language”, but if you had read a bit further you would have actually found out what it actually stands for. I know, that requires effort and all.

    And no website is better than your mess.

    scott e: you mean php (server sided scripting language) ?
    wait, what’s your website again Dr. Kenneth ?

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