Question

Client cannot access a subdomain, even though I can

Posted on May 10, 2020
DNS WordPress
Asked by afletcher

So I set up the client’s domain subdomain to a droplet, which serves as their “backend”. I can access the website fine on admin.clientdomain.com, on mobile, browsers and different browsers or computers. The DNS is handled by digital ocean, and I have confirmed this is working.

When the client attempts to access the subdomain on a safari browser (mac computer), it just reroutes to the main domain. When giving them the IP of the droplet, it just loads a white screen. The droplet has a Wordpress site from the marketplace loaded on it.

The site is also https encrypted with lets-encrypt.

I have

Switched off the UFW firewall - no difference
Asked the client to clear the cache from their browser / try different browsers - no difference
Ran a traceroute from my side to the subdomain, which looks like its working fine.

The website is the default Wordpress one from the marketplace, I have the default apache2 conf, and in /var/html/.htaccess I have this (to redirect to the admin panel, as this is used as a CMS).

RedirectMatch ^/$ /wp-admin

λ tracert admin.vetyogi.com

Tracing route to admin.vetyogi.com [209.97.137.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    11 ms     5 ms     6 ms  testwifi.here [192.168.86.1]
  2    17 ms    22 ms    38 ms  10.13.144.1
  3    57 ms    25 ms    18 ms  lutn-core-2b-xe-013-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.252.71.89]
  4    21 ms    24 ms    25 ms  lutn-core-2a-ae1-0.network.virginmedia.net [62.252.64.153]
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6    28 ms    16 ms    29 ms  m686-mp2.cvx1-b.lis.dial.ntli.net [62.254.42.174]
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8    18 ms    21 ms    19 ms  uk-lon01b-ri1-ae-25-0.aorta.net [84.116.136.102]
  9    22 ms    20 ms    26 ms  ldn-b1-link.telia.net [213.248.84.25]
 10     *       21 ms     *     ldn-bb4-link.telia.net [62.115.121.28]
 11    21 ms    20 ms    16 ms  ldn-b4-link.telia.net [62.115.134.139]
 12    29 ms    19 ms    18 ms  digitalocean-ic-306494-ldn-b3.c.telia.net [62.115.44.250]
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15    27 ms    19 ms     *     209.97.137.10
 16    19 ms    20 ms    16 ms  209.97.137.10

Trace complete.

I’m running out of ideas, besides it being an issue with the client’s ISP.

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KFSys

Site Moderator

• May 11, 2020

Accepted Answer

Hi @afletcher,

This sounds really interesting! I’ve just tried to :

Open your Droplet’s IP in the browser
Ping the Domain it shows
Do a CURL request to see the headers it returns.

I can confirm everything looks to be working perfectly well. Having said that, had you made any changes to the Apache’s Vhost files of the domain? Maybe the issue lied there.

Alternatively, my suggestion might have been a router cache as I have seen this, and after a reboot of the router everything worked perfectly.

Can you confirm what was it as this is something I would like to know as well?

Regards, KDSys

afletcher • May 12, 2020

Hello,

It was indeed the user’s router cache (I did not even know they had them!?).

I got the client to access the site at work, and it loaded as normal. As all their devices were connected to the router, after power-cycling it started to work properly.

Thanks for your help!