DNS zone confusion revisited

[bubinski]

My website has been setup and running for almost 3 months now. I have only my own website in my VPS account and am not a reseller. I can't see any problems with it so far even though at the beginning I had difficulty with my DNS zone stuff that got messed up when I did a software upgrade on cPanel and had to have some help from tech support on one thing regarding it. I'm getting plenty of hits daily, average about 25,000. No problem connecting to my website using "www.mydomain.com".

But a couple of things still bother me and I'm not sure if I'm just not understanding the DNS zone though I've tried and tried and I've read tons of different things I found doing Web searchs and I've read tons of stuff on the Knownhost forum. It's just confusing me the more I read.

Bother #1 is that if I type my IP address (xx.xxx.5.120) into the URL box of any web browser shouldn't it take me to my website? Mine takes me to the
"Great Success! Apache is working on your cPanel and WHM Server" page. I noticed some people in this forum stating that their IP address takes them to their website.

Bother #2 is the host.mydomain.com. Where should it take me when I type "host.mydomain.com" into the URL box of my browser? Mine takes me to the "Great Success! Apache is working on your cPanel and WHM Server" page.

I can't help thinking I've just got something not right with my DNS zone. Thanks for any info.

 

[Dan]

Hello bubinski,

Bother #1 is that if I type my IP address (xx.xxx.5.120) into the URL box of any web browser shouldn't it take me to my website? Mine takes me to the "Great Success! Apache is working on your cPanel and WHM Server" page. I noticed some people in this forum stating that their IP address takes them to their website.

The days of dedicated IPs for each domain are no longer with us. It was at one point in time true that you needed an IP for each domain. But then when they saw that they would eventually run out of IP numbers the software developers made it so many domains could be shared on one IP. If you type the IP of a host in that has multiple domains hosted on the same IP there really is no telling which domain you will get. You appear to be getting your hostname when you put it into your browser.

Bother #2 is the host.mydomain.com. Where should it take me when I type "host.mydomain.com" into the URL box of my browser? Mine takes me to the "Great Success! Apache is working on your cPanel and WHM Server" page.

This is the default apache page you're seeing. If you want to replace it you certainly can but you shouldn't be seeing any traffic or anything for it anyways.

Since you are only hosting the one domain it is possible that you could dedicate one of your 2 IPs to it but I do not think you can do that when your nameservers are assigned 1 to each IP. Perhaps one of those others you spoke of will chime in to enlighten us as to how they have it configured.

Otherwise it sounds to me like your VPS is set up just fine

 

[mylinear]

Hello bubinski,
If you type the IP of a host in that has multiple domains hosted on the same IP there really is no telling which domain you will get. You appear to be getting your hostname when you put it into your browser.

Actually, I think (someone please correct me if I am wrong), typing in the IP will show the domain that is listed first in the VirtualHost section in the httpd.conf file.

You can edit the file to add a VirtualHost section which you want to be shown when typing in the IP. However, I am not sure I want to do that and mess things up. As Dan says, it all seems to be setup correctly now.

If you submit a ticket to support and tell them what you want, they should be able to edit the file and help you.

 

[bubinski]

OK, after reading your posts I think I'll stop worrying about it. I feel better now that I have had it explained to me the way you've explained it to me. Thanks so much for clearing this up for me.