Fix: Site Not Loading After a DNS Change

If your site is not loading after a DNS change, don't panic — in most cases nothing is broken, and the fix is straightforward. The usual causes are propagation delay, a small error in a record, or cached data on your own device. This guide is a calm, practical checklist to work through in order, so you find the real problem instead of changing things at random and making it worse.

1. Give propagation time

DNS changes spread across the internet gradually. After saving a record, allow a few hours before assuming something is wrong — full worldwide propagation can take up to 24–48 hours depending on the TTL. It's completely normal for the site to work on your phone's mobile data while still failing on your home wifi during this window. Patience resolves a surprising number of 'it's broken' moments.

2. Double-check your records

Re-open your DNS settings and read the values carefully. The most common mistakes are easy to miss:

• A record pointing to the wrong IP address
• Missing www CNAME, so only the bare domain works (or vice versa)
• An extra space or typo in a value
• Two conflicting records for the same name
• Old records left behind from a previous setup

Fix one issue at a time and wait for propagation before testing again — changing everything at once makes it impossible to tell what worked.

3. Clear your own cache

Your computer and browser remember DNS answers for a while, so you might be seeing an old result even after the change has gone live elsewhere. Try the site in a private/incognito window, on a different device, or on mobile data instead of wifi. If it loads in one of those, the change is working and your local cache just needs time to catch up.

4. Check for the SSL warning

If the site loads but shows a 'not secure' warning, the issue isn't DNS — it's your SSL certificate, which may need a little time to be issued for the new setup. Our SSL guide explains what's happening and how it resolves.

Still stuck?

If everything checks out and a full day has passed, revisit the instructions from your host or platform — a single required record is often missed. And if you switched nameservers, remember your records now live on the other provider's side, not here.

Check what the rest of the world sees

Because your own device caches DNS, it's a poor judge of whether a change is truly live. A more reliable test is to check from outside your network: open the site on mobile data with wifi turned off, ask a friend in another town to try it, or use an online DNS-propagation checker that queries servers around the world. If those show the new record while your computer doesn't, the change is working and only your local cache is behind — no further fix needed, and it will sort itself out as soon as your device's cached answer expires.

Don't make things worse

When a site is down it's tempting to change lots of settings quickly, but that usually turns one small problem into several. Resist it. Make a single, deliberate change, note the time, and wait for propagation before touching anything else. If you've already changed several things, set the records back to the values your host recommends and start from a known-good state. Methodical beats frantic every time with DNS, and keeping a short note of what you changed and when makes any remaining problem far easier to trace.