Adding binding hostname in IIS to website breaks site

Question

I'm baffled by an issue with my site in IIS 7 - it works fine when it's the only site that's running, and no binding is being used. I have my domain name www.mysite.com registered with the DNS to point to my IP and it pulls up my site great. However, now I want to add a second site in IIS, so I have to start using the binding host names, but when I put www.mysite.com in as the host name, suddenly I can't pull up the site anymore! And, I don't know if this information is helpful, but if I start up the Default Web Site (that has no bindings) along side my current website that I've added the binding to, the domain name will pull the default web site (IIS7 jpeg) instead! It's like it completely doesn't see the binding I've added, other than the fact that it allows me to run both sites at the same time. It doesn't take time for the binding to take effect in IIS right? Waiting until tomorrow won't make a difference I imagine?

I've done this many times before on other servers, and as far as I can remember, I seem to be doing everything the same as before. I can't figure out why it's not working this time. Am I forgetting something crucial here?

The only difference I can tell is that this domain is hosted with Google, which requires me to update the DNS myself. All those other times, I've called up goDaddy and said, 'Hey, can you point this domain to this IP address?' and they do it for me. Is it possible that I've updated the DNS incorrectly, or incompletely? I don't know if that can be the case if the domain has been pulling up the website just fine all this time until I tried to add the second website on the server... Any ideas?

BTW, this is a virtual server (2008 R2) hosted at atlantic.net - I've never used them before. All the other virtual servers I've used have been with 1and1. Don't know if that makes a difference too.

Answer 1

Ok, I figured it out - turns out the DNS WAS set incorrectly after all! I was able to narrow down the issue when I started creating a bunch of dummy sites and playing with my local computer's hostfile and saw that everything seemed to be routing just fine. So, clearly IIS was working as expected. So, I then called GoDaddy repeatedly until I found someone who agreed to help me with a Google domain. Apparently, from what I could understand, I set the IP address in the wrong place which only made the domain forward as the IP address, so there was no hostname for IIS to match it to, which is why it pulled up the default website (no bindings) with no problems, and ONLY the default website! He directed me to another screen (the DNS Zone File tab) where I could set it properly. Now, everything goes to the expected sites!

Hopefully this will help another newbie out one day when they have to set their own DNS (gasp!)