"This webpage is not available ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED"

I’m having a lot of my users complain about being unable to access our forums, seeing the message “This webpage is not available ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED”.

It seems to be somehow specific to Chrome, and I know DNS flushing will work for them, but the issue will still pop up for them off and on.

One of the users thinks it has to do with post autosaves saying “For some strange reasons, when the post auto saves it has a high chance of making you get that dns error when you leave that post for later.”

We also have a thread going on here discussing it: Forum down on chrome - Support - Dungeon Quest Forums

Any idea if there’s something I can do to help solve this issue on my end?

The problem lies somewhere between the user and your DNS provider. The forum software itself has no control over whether or not DNS works correctly.

From a quick look, your DNS service looks mostly OK, with the possible exception that the authoritative DNS servers for your domain are reporting that ns1.linode.com is authoritative for your domain, when it isn’t. That shouldn’t be causing the problem you’re seeing, but cleaning that up is a good idea regardless.

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Isn’t there a “check my DNS for issues” website we can send people to?

For basic global propagation you can check
https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/dungeon-quest.com

For configuration issues you can check

I agree, the multiple conflicting records there are a problem as @mpalmer noted.

Well, personally, I use Squishywishywoo: complete dns traversal checking as my “go-to” tool for checking DNS problems, but it doesn’t catch everything (the extra NS record in this case I found with a manual dig), and it’s somewhat, uh, “technically focused” (to say the least). I also use http://dnssec-debugger.verisignlabs.com/ if I suspect DNSSEC troubles. I don’t know of any one site you can drop a name into and have it check everything I’ve seen go wrong with DNS.

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Well the site I linked does catch the thing you brought up and it looks like a valid check.

That makes sense, I’ll give solving those DNS issues a try. Thanks for the help! :smile: