Yesterday we sent out emails to site admins who are still using one of the old IP addresses in their custom domain DNS 'A' records. It's been some time that ping wikidot.com returns the new IP address and now we're switching off that old front-end IP address.
Sorry for not announcing this before sending out the email. In any case it's trivial to check:
$ ping wikidot.com
PING wikidot.com (74.86.234.149) 56(84) bytes of data.
EDIT by Gabrys:
Just to remind, to update your DNS settings, you need to either log into your DNS settings web service or locate the zone file for the listed domains. There you change the old Wikidot IP address (which may be 74.86.235.236 or 67.228.37.26) to the new IP address: 74.86.234.149. If using Bind or similar software, don't forget to update the serial number for the zone :-)
So, 67.228.37.26 is the old address and 74.86.234.149 the new one?
Change A record to 74.86.234.149
or
Change to CNAME record to "wikidot.com"
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
That's right.
Portfolio
Needless to say that CNAME records are better, because they free you from any maintenance if we change IP address. But usually you can't set CNAMEs for root domains (= domains with one dot). Use A records with the proper IP address in this case.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
In case I do want to use the CNAME option. What should I do with the "ARecord @ 67.228.37.26" ? just delete it ?
Also, in my case its written "CNAME www wikidot.com", which means that the www aspect of the CNAME is currently pointing to the wikidot.com, should it be changed to www.wikidot.com ?
if I delete the A record, will the yaroslavtenzer.com still work or people would need to enter www.yaroslavtenzer.com ?
thank you for the replies !
ya
For your root domain: "yaroslavtenzer.com" you probably want to keep an A record, so just replace the old IP address with the new one. For "www.yaroslavtenzer.com" it's better to set a CNAME record, point this domain to one of: "www.wikidot.com." (as suggested in emails), "wikidot.com." (as suggested in Site Manager) or to your root domain "yaroslavtenzer.com." as they all will resolve into the proper wikidot.com IP address.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
Thank you, now its clear ! ya.
It might be just a coincidence but since the change of IP address my sites are now showing up near or at the top of Google search results. They were always fine on yahoo etc but not getting anything like a sensible rank on Google whatever SEO methods I used. I don't know if the change had this in mind or even if it has caused this improvement but it is very very welcome and I have had two people contact me this morning having noticed the dramatic leap in google ranking for their site since Tuesday. So thank you from them and from me.
(Bing is still playing up and stubbornly refusing to show sites but I'm less worried about that and I guess it will get sorted shortly.)
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Ah! I've been trying to convince Michal that the Google Problem was not a figment of my imagination!
I'm going to change the DNS for my sites today and see if it makes a difference too… thanks for this good news, Rob.
Portfolio
Thanks, Ed, for noticing that. I just checked and my sites show up in way better positions in a Google search, since the IP change. Very nice, guys!
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
Two interesting developments. A while ago I created a Google Alert for my website's topic. Today, I received an alert on a page I had just created. That's very quick! The thing is, the page in question belongs to a private category.
Shouldn't Google be unable to find that page?
Eduardo R. Ribeiro
http://www.etnolinguistica.org
I once saw graffiti "Google is God" but even so, private categories should be invisible to Google.
Can you PM me the URL to the page? We'll check this out.
Portfolio
I was translating to spanish the handbook "Custom Domain" page and I found there the old IP address… I change it in the english version and in the spanish version I am working on, I think it is neccesary to change it in the other languages version.
Thank you for your changes and this warning, I started the other lanuages!
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
Whaaaat? Not even close:
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Who is God ?
Well, neither Clapton nor Google, of course, and yet both, somehow! :-)
Portfolio
Hi, I'm a tad confused. I thought I had done this through my custom domain settings (GoDaddy) which points to my wikidot domain but I have received a message telling me if I don't change it my site will no longer be online.
HELP!
Stacey
I've just had the same email and yet changed all my sites on Tuesday last week so I think something at wikidot hasn't picked up the change.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Same here. I had all my DNS updated as required and yet they send me this email telling me I haven't changed it yet. I'm puzzled is to why they did that when I've already done it.
Something went wrong (mutter mutter) and many (all?) master admins got the email again. If you made the changes you can check using "ping" from a command line. Sorry about the confusion. We're going to send out yet another email to master admins who's domains are now working correctly…
Portfolio
In case you already updated the DNS records and got this e-mail, it's OK. We may see some of the domains pointing to the old IP address because of DNS caching issues at our hosting service. But please double check for sure.
Thanks!
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
And sorted it is. Bing has now put my sites at the top of the ranking list for relevant searches.
I firmly believe this DNS change is behind it so thank you thank you thank you.
Rob Elliott - Strathpeffer, Scotland - Wikidot first line support & community admin team.
Can someone please explain to me how changing DNS settings could possibly have an impact on Google search results? I am nonplussed, but would like to understand this.
The small amount of this that I understand, seems to suggest that the IP address of a website has an impact on its Google PageRank. Is that true?
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
How Google rates pages is their secret. No-one knows what impacts the site ranking.
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
Okay, so am I right in thinking that the only visible change (to Google or anyone else), when changing DNS settings, is that the site's IP address will change? Or is it more complicated than that?
My understanding of these changes is that data was moved from one server to a newer, faster server with a different IP address. As a result DNS settings needed to be updated to point to this new server instead of pointing to the old one.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)