Website down after domain transfer and listing incorrect nameservers
What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?
[NOTE: domains listed below use hyphens due to community link limit restrictions for me as a new user]
I transferred this domain from Namecheap to Cloudflare yesterday. Note: the nameservers listed at Namecheap were incorrect and set as ns1.siteground-com and ns2.siteground-com
I created the domain and imported all the DNS settings from Siteground which hosts the site to Cloudlflare
Cloudflare created 2 NS records with the correct nameservers which are ns1.siteground-net and ns2.siteground-net (not sure this is the correct configuration for Siteground sites using Clouldflare)
Whois shows that Cloudflare is now the registrar but still shows the wrong name servers that were listed at Namecheap
So if Cloudflare is the current registrar and the DNS has the correct name servers why does Whois show the wrong name servers?
What feature, service or problem is this related to?
Something has gone wrong there. It shouldn’t be possible to move a domain registration to Cloudflare if the domain isn’t already added to, and active, on Cloudflare which requires the use of Cloudflare nameservers. There are Cloudflare nameservers resolving for your domain… https://cf.sjr.dev/tools/check?849c8872f3a5488099000c6dcd9bccd7#dns
Best to raise a Registrar support ticket and ask for the nameservers to be fixed.
The apex domain NS records in your Cloudflare DNS will have been imported from your previous DNS when you added the domain to Cloudflare, and they do nothing. You can delete them.
The siteground.com nameservers are those set at your registrar and in turn, the .com registry. As Cloudflare is now your registrar due to the transfer you need to get these changed to the 2 allocated Cloudflare nameservers by raising a Registrar support ticket with Cloudflare. (The domain transfer should have not succeeded if the Cloudflare nameservers weren’t already in place).
Thank you for the clarification. You mention creating a Registrar support ticket. I’ve currently transferred a few domains to Cloudflare but this is the only one that has a website attached. I was using the free plan for that. I don’t seem to have a way to create a Registrar support ticket without a paid plan. Is that correct?
I have submitted a support ticket. I will report back what I find out. I had another domain I transferred from a different web host that didn’t work as well. In that case the issue was I needed to turn the proxy off for the domain records which is turned on by default which I found out on this forum. Seems like they shouldn’t turn on the proxies by default or at least provide a more visible warning.
That’s a different situation and not to do with domain registration transfers since zones must be active on Cloudflare before that can happen.
Some hosts just may not work with the proxy - either they require the DNS resolves to their A/AAAA/CNAMEs, it prevents SSL certificate issuance or other reasons. The proxy is enabled by default as that’s the reason to use Cloudflare, and it hides the DNS records for the underlying service as soon as the domain goes active.
So I got an email today that the domain transfer was completed. I then checked Whois and the correct nameservers were now listed. My website was now functioning as well. I guess once the transfer was completed the nameservers were updated to the correct ones. I still haven’t heard back on my support ticket submitted 24 hours ago. In any case this was a happy ending with a lesson learned.
