Setting up a website on a Virtual Private Server

Question

I've got my website files on a VPS as of right now, I can access the website using the IP of my VPS, but despite my multiple attempts I can't successfully point my domain to my VPS. I've created a DNS through my registrar to point to the VPS IP, once I link it to my domain, accessing the domain results in a connection timeout. I've also tried using the free DNS services provided by no-ip, same issue. Could this be an issue with my domain services? It's very irritating, does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

First, you might want to check that your DNS is actually setup correctly. From a different computer, use nslookup to do a DNS lookup like so:

nslookup hostname.domain.tld

Does it return the correct address for your VPS? If so, that's a good sign - the FQDN that you are using for your site is resolving correctly.

If the DNS is resolving correctly, then the next step to troubleshoot would be to see if your web server is responding to HTTP requests, by using telnet to attempt a connection to your web server on port 80. The following blog has a good write-up about how to do this: http://blog.tonycode.com/tech-stuff/http-notes/making-http-requests-via-telnet

Once you've isolated the problem to either a DNS issue or a webserver issue, you can troubleshoot further. If you post your results to these tests here, someone here will be able to suggest the next steps.