Description
The food bank is moving from Hostgator to Siteground for their WordPress site’s hosting.
Migration
2021-09-09
Retried the migration after Office365 was already configured, but it was configured via DNS on HostGator. I revisited DNS entries and migrated the one new Office365 MX record across.
Deleted the site on Siteground and used their transfer plugin to do another transfer. The transfer failed with a blank install of WP on Siteground, so I emptied the public_html directory. After that, the transfer completed successfully.
I tried using SiteGround’s temporary domain to preview the site, but it simply redirected to the primary domain, perhaps because of a setting in a plugin or somewhere else. I went ahead and flipped over the domain servers figuring I’ll fix it after the fact if there’s a problem. I don’t have time to troubleshoot their domain forwarding to figure out where and why that’s happening.
I have the current site loaded into a browser tab for comparison when the nameservers have been propagated and the site is being served from Siteground. I disabled my tab unloader plugin so I could use it as a reference if needed.
2021-08-28
I used the Siteground migration plugin to move the site across. Then I manually copied DNS records from Hostgator over to 1&1. I tried to create an A record that would allow me to point the MX record back to Hostgator’s mail.
I got an email from Karen Lazon informing me we’d need to revert back since the DNS migration broke their email. I went back to 1&1 to revert the NS servers. I entered the previous settings (which I had recorded below) and saved. The UI still showed the IONOS nameserver settings which I had restored during the migration.
I called IONOS support at 10am to see why I couldn’t save the setting and was told by Nick it could take 48 hours to propagate. I told him I understood this but that it also wasn’t showing the settings in their UI. He said he would try to do it from his side. He sent me an email that I was to reply to in order to give him the new NS server settings. He sent me a screenshot showing when he had set my new settings. He said to give it a few minutes to show in their UI.
This seemed strange, but I did wait about 40 minutes. The change never showed in the UI.
I called back and spoke to Rafael at 10:41am. He again told me the change takes time to propagate. I told him I understand that it takes time to propagate to DNS and asked if it also takes time to propagate to their own UI. He said it does. I asked if there’s any way to verify that the change was pending. He said he would check and very quickly told me he saw a change was pending. (I got a sense this was a tactic to get me off the phone and did not correlate to any actual verification.)
I asked if there was no way to verify the change was entered properly and if I just had to wait 48-72 hours to find out and then start again if there was a problem. He confirmed I would. I think I said, “Wow.” He asked me to hold. I held for a few minutes. He came back on the line and said he had confirmed it was pending in our system. (This appears to have been an actual confirmation based on what happened next.) I asked if he could confirm the new values, and he read back ns1.westseattlefoodbank.org and ns2.westseattlefoodbank.org. I thanked him and ended the call.
As of 7:15 PM, these changes are still not showing in the IONOS UI, and they have not propagated through DNS.
Notes
Existing DNS
- Domains are on 1&1
- Nameservers point to Hostgator
- ns2.westseattlefoodbank.org
- ns1.westseattlefoodbank.org
Hostgator
- IP: 192.254.194.154
- CPanel port: 2083