Trying to move doman from Heart to Cloudflare, first step was to change nameservers as CF interface requested. I checked the DNS on Cloudflare and the only problem I possible found was that there was a * and www entry in “A” but no @, however Cloudflare interface wouldn’t allow me to add a @ entry as it said one already existed.
Anyhow the result of changing nameservers was that the page went down, and DNS was not being returned to anyone by the Cloudflare name servers despite the correct IP being visible to me in the DNS settings in Cloudflare interface.
I had to revert back to old nameservers to restore website.
What feature, service or problem is this related to?
I’m negotiating taking this over from someone else. I did send them the full list of DNS details Cloudflare gave me and they told me they all matched so I believe they were identical but cannot manually check.
Is that the DNS records imported by Cloudflare? If the person says they are correct, then the easiest thing to do is switch back to the Cloudflare nameservers and solve any problems from there.
Thanks. Yeah I had about an hour this afternoon when I was trying this but failing. The ICANN website said I was using the Cloudflare nameservers I had been allocated, the fields in the DNS looked good (like the A * and www pointed to the correct IP address) but attempts to visit the website all gave DNS_Probe_Possible errors. I tried changing * to @, and I removed some old NS entries (in the DNS) for the old provider, but nothing worked. So I had to give up and go back to the old provider when I couldn’t work out how to fix things in CF
In the CF interface the Overview page was still telling me I needed to changed the nameservers, but they had been done. I couldn’t work out anything else to change in the CF interface to make it actually tell people where my website was.
Okay thanks. I’ll maybe try again, but it means taking the site down again. Thanks for your help, are they are any common reasons for what I’ve likely done wrong to cause it to fail?
Assuming you have the correct Cloudflare nameservers and enter them correctly at your registrar (removing all other nameservers), have selected a Cloudflare plan (even if free), DNSSEC is disabled which it is for your domain… https://cf.sjr.dev/tools/check?c07f8a04971d48f985da1591fce59057#dns
…and have the correct DNS records, all should be ok and there should be no downtime.
Thank you that’s very helpful. The nameservers were definitely fine as I could see them on an ICANN lookup, the DNS settings looked like this (on Cloudflare, and still do):
The warnings on the left are still there now and say that the hostname is not covered by a certificate.
I’ll have a read about the SSL settings (and I don’t understand enough to know if that could have caused what I saw), I never got a redirect error though, I tried lots of DNS lookup sites and they all said the CF nameservers were not configured or not giving a response. SSL-wise I was just expecting the site to report an incorrect SSL certificate.
The SSL certificate won’t be generated until your domain is active on Cloudflare, so you need to change the nameservers first. You can change them now if you want while I’m around.
Yeah, sorry I can’t as it’s the other person who has access to the old account to change things, I had them on the phone a lot this afternoon, but I can’t try it again now. Sorry.
I wonder if I can I just try and initiate a full transfer, pay for the domain, and provide the authorization key, does that get around having to change nameservers myself?
Okay thanks for all your help. I’ll get the current owner to send me a definite list of all DNS settings and scrutinize it all, read about the SSL and try again when I can. Thanks.
When I change the nameservers to Cloudflare my website goes down
What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?
I asked for help on this forum last week and got useful advice from @sjr, I’ve now tried again and at least this time am able to share the diagnostics after it’s gone wrong as I haven’t put the nameservers back yet.
In sjr’s tool the best I can tell is there’s an error about “Saying there are no Cloudflare nameservers set at your registrar.” but the help hyperlink goes to a broken weblink.
I’ve tried reading the full diagnostics here: https://cf.sjr.dev/tools/check?9e1ad986c26745ce9447471c77d54d11 but I can’t see what’s wrong maybe someone can help me?
I’ve tried “dig problemist.org +trace @8.8.8.8” and that suggests that CF is not providing the IP address any more so I expect my site is gradually going down around the world again now.
What feature, service or problem is this related to?
Nameservers
What are the steps to reproduce the issue?
I changed the Nameservers from the host (heart internet) to Cloudflare.
Thanks for re-opening. As expected my site has now totally gone down. The ICANN look-up tells me that the name servers have changed, but Cloudflare doesn’t seem to be directing anyone to it.
This week my browser just says: “We can’t connect to the server at www.theproblemist.org.”
