Website is down, need help troubleshooting

NHG

Dreamhost also said this:

I understand Ezoic is masking your DNS, but without their proxy being
deactivated, I'm afraid we cannot ensure the correct DNS is in place. I
suggest either pausing the proxy or sharing a screenshot showing the
current DNS records in place, making sure north the A and WWW records are
displayed.

Pausing the proxy would be best, though, the site is not working either
way, so it is not going to do any harm to deactivate it.

Lilla

NHG I've paused our proxy, I suspect this will allow Dreamhost to regenerate their SSL which should solve this issue. We've been seeing this problem a fair bit with them, recently, for some reason their systems don't seem to allow SSL generation when a proxy is activated which causes these problems.

Let us know when you need the proxy re-activated. 🙂

NHG

Hi,

I repointed the nameservers back to Dreamhost and reset the SSL with Dreamhost. Everything was working well. I then pointed the nameservers back to Ezoic. I am now getting this error.

It seems there is infinite redirect loop now happening. Here is a shot of my domain Cpannel as well. You can see the Ezoic equivalent on your end.

Everything was working so well for so long with no issues. What changed? How do we get this fixed?

JeanPierre

NHG Our system is not currently active on the site and the DNS records seem to be correct. Could you please have your host whitelist the list of IPs that can be found here?

NHG

I have made this request.

How we get your system active on the website?

You guys are giving me this error message to get this thing up and running. It says you need to activate it.

Here is the response from Dreamhost.

it looks like the main site is showing one error and
the WWW showing another, unfortunately. Right now, you have your main
domain DNS records split up between us and Amazon:

newhuntersguide.com. 300 IN A 3.33.152.147
newhuntersguide.com. 300 IN A 15.197.142.173
newhuntersguide.com. 300 IN A 64.90.52.34

As such, a user hitting your site will get either the site loading up at
Amazon, or the site loading with us. You'll need to remove the two IP's
related to Amazon's services so the site is only pointing to us at
64.90.52.34.

As for the WWW, this is setup with the following two IP's and a CNAME:

www.newhuntersguide.com. 300 IN CNAME
www.newhuntersguide.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.
www.newhuntersguide.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 104.21.32.196
www.newhuntersguide.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. 300 IN A 172.67.154.113

You shouldn't need a CNAME for the WWW record as you can simply set up an
A record for the WWW sub-domain to point to the same 64.90.52.34 instead
so that the main domain and WWW sub-domain points to the same place.

You may want to reach out to Ezoic to make sure you have that all
configured properly through their panel interface.

NHG

I have worked things out on Dreamhost's side. According to them, the rest of the fix is now 100% on Ezoic's side to execute. See below.

Also your own site is showing me that you need to help resolve this, per the attachment.

Please help, my site has been down for days, this is my peak time of the year. The ad revenue is pennies compared to the affiliate revenue at stake. I need to get this resolved.

The 'newhuntersguide.com' domain now is showing an error and
automatically redirecting services to the WWW sub-domain. I see that the
main domain DNS record is only pointing to our IP now, so that part looks
good:

newhuntersguide.com. 296 IN A 64.90.52.34

Your WWW sub-domain is still set up with the CNAME, and that sub-domain
still not loading, unfortunately. But, the main domain is directed to us,
and now loading the main domain through WWW where it loads the error.

So, the WWW part will still need to be fixed since the site isnt'
loading, but the main domain only points to our IP now.

As for white listing IP's, we don't actually do that, I'm afraid. If it's
a legitimate IP, it'll be able to connect just fine, so the white listing
should not be needed.

Also, nothing needs to be done at GoDaddy. Your DNS is managed at Ezoic,
so for this matter, you just need to update the DNS at Ezoic. GoDaddy is
just managing the domain registration itself and has no ties to the
management of the DNS since Ezoic handles that for you.

cjsmith

NHG seems Dreamhost are still misunderstanding how a proxy works unfortunately. They're using a third-party DNS checker but such services don't account for the use of a proxy. Therefore, the information they've provided is irrelevant. Our copy of your DNS record already points to 64.90.52.34 and nowhere else. The only reason they see those additional IP addresses is that requests are travelling via those on our end. That is expected behaviour.

All that remains is to turn Ezoic's proxy back on to allow our SSL to take note of the changes at Dreamhost's end.

To recap: SSL at the origin server expired causing the site to go down. Dreamhost's infrastructure does not allow for the generation of a new SSL certificate whilst the site is being routed through a proxy for some reason, so at that point the available fixes were either a) amending Ezoic's SSL settings to reflect the fact that there was no longer a valid SSL certificate at the origin server or b) route the site directly to Dreamhost to allow them to regenerate a SSL certificate. You chose option b) - after the SSL certificate was regenerated at Dreamhost's end, we turned Ezoic's proxy back on in order to bring the site back up.

Please note therefore that this issue could arise again if Dreamhost's SSL certificate expires. You may wish to take a note of the expiration date of that so that you are well prepared in advance 🙂

NHG

cjsmith Can I just say thank you. This is the first time anyone has said anything that made sense of all of this to me. I did not intentionally choose option B; I didn't know there were options until this moment. I would have chosen option A. But this was a cloudy mess until right now. Thank you for making it clear. Next time, I will be well equipped to handle this properly. I assume it's still possible to go with option A, but I would need to disable the SSL on Dream host first? At this point I just need the site to work for awhile so I don't want to take it down for anything, but I just want to understand my options better.

Thanks.

JeanPierre

NHG It certainly is still possible to go with option A. How you'd go about this is to first disable the SSL at your host. From there, you'll go to your Ezoic dashboard > Settings > Privacy > SSL > Edit SSL Settings. You'll then set SSL Type to 'flexible' and turn on Automatic HTTPS Redirect. This will allow for Ezoic's SSL to become the primary SSL and run on your site without the need for your host's SSL.

If you wish to go with option B, that is totally fine as well. For this, you'll just need to point your site back to Dream Host whenever you need to renew the SSL certificate with them.

NHG

Hello, I have followed your instructions and disabled the SSL on dreamhost and then went to > Settings > Privacy > SSL > Edit SSL Settings. And set SSL Type to 'flexible' and turned on Automatic HTTPS Redirect.

The site does not seem to be back up yet. Can you check on this?

Ethan

NHG Its been 5 months since we looked into this with you - can you send us a screenshot of the DNS from your host so we can crosscheck this with the Ezoic DNS? We need to make sure the DNS is still up to date/matches the Ezoic DNS. I'm not seeing an SSL error right now, it looks more like the site is down due to a DNS mismatch.

NHG

Here is everything I have from Godaddy and Dreamhost. You should be able to see the settings in Ezoic. Nothing has been touched or changed by me anywhere.

HarryB

Looks like there was a change to your IP address. I've gone ahead and updated them for you which should get things back up and running again - clear your cache in the next couple of mins and you should get access to your site again. I'd recommend checking your full list of DNS records here:

https://pubdash.ezoic.com/settings/dns/dnsrecords

And making sure that they match what you're seeing at dreamhost.

NHG

Thank you! The site still does not seem to be working.

I see that list and the list at Dream host which I attached before. Which list should I update to match the other?

Honestly, I'm kind of uncomfortable looking at those records and decision which to update or if needed the one on one list is the same on the other list. If changes need to be made at Dreamhost can you tell me which records to change?

HarryB

You shouldn't make any changes at dreamhost at all. You'd just update your Ezoic DNS records to match the dreamhost list.

I can see the site is still down but the error has changed for me which is positive. I've gone ahead and updated your SSL settings which should fix things but I'd also recommend reaching out to dreamhost to make sure that your DNS records reflect your current host IP address. Let us know what they say

NHG

Thanks, its still not working. I did change all the DNA records to match Dream host. Here is what their support said.

Upon checking the account history I can see that your site was moved to a
different Shared server as we want your services to operate on a more
performative server which can guarantee the uptime of the site, and due
to this the IP address of the @ and WWW A records has changed, as you
manage the DNS through an external provider, we are unable to make the
necessary updates for you and this requires to have you change them on
your end.

The new IP addresses for the A records are:

If you run your own DNS outside of DreamHost (i.e. you're not using
ns1.dreamhost.com, ns2.dreamhost.com and ns3.dreamhost.com as your
domains' nameservers) you'll need to update your records now. To see the
new IP for the domain, please go to the 'Manage Websites' page, then
click the 'Manage' button for the domain, and then the DNS tab on the
page that loads. You can then use these new IPs to point your services to
us from the outside DNS provider which is managing your DNS.

For your convenience, here are your new IPs:

newhuntersguide.com: 75.119.203.241

FTP:

If you are using your server name (server.dreamhost.com) as your FTP
hostname, be sure to change that to your domain name. A fully hosted
domain name will always point to the correct server if it is changed
again in the future. If for some reason you can't use your domain name,
your new server name is included at the top of this message.

That's it, really... and we really apologize for any inconvenience which
may have resulted from this move!

Should you encounter any difficulties or have any further questions,
please feel free to contact our support team. We are available to assist
you and provide the necessary guidance.

Thank you for choosing DreamHost. We appreciate the opportunity to serve
you.

Mohammad2306

Do you have an SSL certificate installed through your host? If that's the case, you will also need to update your SSL settings at Ezoic. The current setting is FLEXIBLE but it needs to be FULL if you already have an SSL.

-> Settings -> Privacy -> SSL -> Edit SSL Settings

https://support.ezoic.com/kb/article/using-ssl-with-ezoic

NHG

I am attempting to use the Ezoic SSL, I have deactivated my host SSL per your instructions. I want the SSL to be through Ezoic. Please update any settings needed. Thanks!

Mohammad2306

It's related to the redirect you got set up through your host. You have a couple of options.

Option A: Contact your host and remove the https->https redirect (and then the FLEXIBLE SSL setting at Ezoic will work)

Option B: Contact your host to add their SSL certificate back in and have working https versions (and then reset the Ezoic SSL setting to FULL)

NHG

Ok thanks. I had Dreamhost add the SSL back and have reset the SSL setting to Full on Ezoic, and it worked! Thanks for your help.