Website is down

[idgenomics]

Hi,

I am writing this email after going through multiple different chats and forums and support doc. Talked with 2 customer reps and still have the same issue. hence this post.I am not even sure this is the right forum but google rep asked me to post here.

My website is idgenomics.com which is down from last couple of weeks. This website domain we purchased from register.com. Now their Customer support team asked us to check with Google as they are hosting our website. Ideally in the DNS entries we should add the google nameservers. Now 1- I cant find anywhere what would be my nameservers . Its showing the default ones from register.com. 2- All my website content - like texts, png files, blog posts etc are nowhere to be found. If google hosted this I was under impression that it might be stored in drive ( or similar space) but cant find it anywhere . My developer left almost 1 year back and we never had any issue before. Now we are on our own supporting this small business and we are non technical people but after reading the support docs from google was able to atleast set up MX records for gmail. Does anyone know where should I start looking ?

[StephenHind]

@idgenomics I had a quick look at what Google Search has as a cached copy of your site and The Wayback Machine has some entries, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20220129185137/http://idgenomics.com/contact-us/ 

None of this looks like a Google Site (if that's what you thought you were using) so I don;t know what you thought you were.  The archived copy in wayback gives http://www.appryze.com/ as the designer of the site so you may want to get in touch with them as there's no evidence you're using Google Sites at this point.

[idgenomics]

@StephenHindThanks for the info.  Is there a way to know who hosted our website - i know we purchased the domain from register.com, but is there a way to recover all the content ? May be then I can try to put together the website again from scratch.

[StephenHind]

@idgenomics as to know who was hosting your site I imagine you were/are paying a bill for some web hosting?  If not get in touch with the developer I gave you the link to and ask them: I'm not sure why you haven't made that web developer your first port of call; asking random people on the internet can only give you guesses!

Hopefully you'll find the host and just point the domain back there and you're done, if not you could use try and use the wayback machine to get come content back but it will be out of date and not everything may be there.  Google Search cached your homepage on 17 May 2022 so it's only gone down in the past two days.

[StephenHind]

@idgenomics I found a DNS history checker that gives some interesting results:

It looks liek you've let your domain expire at vaious points in the past and when that's happend the nameserves have set to ns1.peer1.net and ns2.peer1.net: I did a DNS lookup against those name servers and got no results so they maybe a service you used to use.

I did another DNS lookup on the immediately previous nameserver dns010.d.register.com and this gave me an IP address, so I manually set my hosts file to use that IP address and I can see a site:

I had to look at the news page before I got any real content, the home page gives an animation and disappears and leaves no other content:

If that's the site you're looking for then the old nameservers gives 35.208.121.254 as an IP for your site (which is currently missing from your DNS records).  A WHOIS lookup does suggest this IP address is in a range that is owned by Google so you may be using some kind of hosting from Google Cloud Platform.

Again your web developer should be able to help, but unless you have any access to teh hosting in GCP then no one else will be able to tell you anything.

[benjaminterry]

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you're experiencing with your website. I can provide some guidance to help you troubleshoot the problem and find the necessary information.

1. Nameservers: To determine the nameservers for your website, you can follow these steps:

   • Login to your account at register.com.
   • Look for a section related to managing your domain or DNS settings.
   • Locate the current nameservers listed there. These are typically provided by register.com by default.
   • If the support team at register.com instructed you to use Google's nameservers, they should have provided you with the specific nameserver information. If they haven't, you should reach out to them again to obtain the correct nameserver details.

2. Website Content: The website content, including texts, images (PNG files), blog posts, etc., is typically stored on the hosting server and not on Google Drive. Google's services like Drive are primarily used for file storage, collaboration, and sharing, rather than hosting websites.

Since your website is down and you are unsure about its hosting environment, there are a few things you can try to identify the hosting provider:

• Check your email or records for any information related to the website hosting. Look for invoices, welcome emails, or correspondence from the hosting provider.
• Contact the previous developer who worked on your website and inquire about the hosting details.
• Perform a DNS lookup using online tools like " dnsqueries". Enter your domain name (idgenomics.com) and check the "NS" (Nameserver) records. This might provide clues about the hosting provider.

Once you have determined the hosting provider, you can reach out to their support team for assistance with accessing your website and retrieving your content.

[christinebake]

I understand your frustration, and I'll do my best to guide you through the process of resolving these issues with your website.

1. Finding Nameservers: Nameservers are crucial for directing your domain's traffic to the correct hosting server. If your website is hosted on Google, you need to find the correct Google nameservers to update in your domain settings at register.com.

The typical Google nameservers for websites hosted on Google Cloud Platform are:

• ns-cloud-e1.googledomains.com
• ns-cloud-e2.googledomains.com
• ns-cloud-e3.googledomains.com
• ns-cloud-e4.googledomains.com

You should log in to your register.com account, go to the domain management section, and update the nameservers to the ones mentioned above. This will point your domain to the correct hosting environment.

1. Website Content: If your website was hosted on Google, your website's content would be stored on Google's servers. However, it's important to note that website content isn't stored in Google Drive, but rather on the server space allocated for your website.