Published in General on Monday, May 3rd, 2004
Our new site resides on a new server. There has been some serious DNS hocus pocus going on, as we see the old version in one browser and the new in another!
I've never paid too much attention to our sites when we switch servers, and truth be told, we've only had to migrate servers a few times prior to this last switch.
This time, however, we rolled the user tracking script that we use into this new version of fiftyfoureleven. We planned on doing some testing of the script within our own site, and wow did it open my eyes to DNS propagation. Get this: I put this site up on Saturday. I've finally been able to see it today, Monday. But our script picked up people accessing the site on Saturday.
For those who wonder about site access via the IP address, the script is set to work for people coming in via the domain name only.
Can DNS propagation really take that long and be that... different? (Not very well worded, but you get my drift, no?)
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Comments and Feedback
Hmm.. Now it seems that I am seeing the old site again when I visit the domain name. What a downer!
Anyway, good excuse to test posting a comment...
Oh, but I see the new site since yesterday, 24 hours+ ago. There are many factors complicating the dns propagation, caching caching on the various servers between you and the dns servers. ISPs are a major blocker.
BTW, could you add one small thing to your stylesheet?
body[id]::beforeWe discussed that once, about site signatures... :-)
Hey Philippe, thanks, that\'s something I forgot. I\'ve added and uploaded.
Caching, eh? Well, next time we go to switch I\'m going to try setting the headers on the old page to keep it from being cached. Here I was thinking I was free to toy on the new server until I could see the new site. I should have known better!
You can always use the HOSTS file method to preview it before propagation where you edit the HOSTS file on your PC in order to preview it on the new server OR you can just use this nifty online tool http://www.previewasite.com all you need to know though is the IP of the new server.