
Why Your Local Machine (Computer) May Not be Pointing to Your Newly Propagated Site
May 15th, 2019
Note: DIG, aka Domain Information Groper, which I used to find out the
new IP address
for my newly propagated web site, is built into my Mac.
According to ns1.com,
(DIG) is the best tool for quickly diagnosing and understanding DNS responses. - Carl Levine, July 13, 2016
And
DIG provides a wealth of information about how a zone is configured, whether or not it’s working properly and can even be queued up with multiple queries at once. - Carl Levine, July 13, 2016
I have added the link to this great and highly informative article at the end of this post.
The other day I moved my business site, interglobalmedianetwork.com,
from
Github gh-pages
to Netlify, where this site resides as well.
mariadcampbell.com
immediately propagated, immediately showed up correctly on
my computer, and everywhere else. However, this was not the case with
interglobalmedianetwork.com.
For a while I couldn’t figure out why it kept on
pointing to my former gh-pages
hosting. I decided to check what
IP address
my computer was pointing to and compare it to the new
Netlify IP address.
First I typed the following command in Terminal to find out what
IP address
my computer was being directed to:
host interglobalmedianetwork.com
The host
command returned the IP address
my computer was redirected to
to reach interglobalmedianetwork.com.
Then I used DIG to find out what the
NEW and ACTUAL IP address for interglobalmedianetwork was. I used the following
command:
dig interglobalmedianetwork.com @dns1.p01.nsone.net
I am using a dummy domain nameserver (@dns1.p01.nsone.net) thanks to nsl.com’s great article on the DIG command. Replace it with that of the hosting service you are using.
The following (example) results are returned to Terminal:
<<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> example.com @dns1.p01.nsone.net a
global options: +cmd
Got answer:
->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 60796
flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
WARNING: recursion requested but not available
QUESTION SECTION:
example.com. IN A
ANSWER SECTION:
example.com. 3600 IN A 104.20.48.182
Query time: 8 msec
SERVER: 198.51.44.1#53(198.51.44.1)
WHEN: Fri Jul 8 10:55:40 2016
MSG SIZE rcvd: 45
Using my actual dnsnameserver for Netlify (not dummy content here), I
achieved success, and saw that the IP address
was different from the one
returned from the host
command. The internet, my Google Pixel 2
smartphone, and my HP laptop were all seeing the newly propagated (and
completely newly built) site, but not my Macbook Pro, where I do all
my developing.
I thought a bit about this, and realized that PROBABLY I had added an
IP address
for interglobalmedianetwork
in my local machine’s hosts
file which still points to the previous IP address
associated with my
previous nameserver.
I remember adding IP addresses
often back in the early days of
WordPress development when site propagation
seemed to take forever, and I
wanted to be able to see changes to my site in development before
propagation was complete. I added the appropriate
IP address(es)
to whichever site(s)
I was working on at any given time. The
file which is responsible for this functionality is the hosts
file
on our local machine (computer). Just remember that if you are having
problems viewing your site after successful propagation, that the
old IP address
might still be residing in your hosts
file.
In order to edit the hosts
file, you first had to run the following
command in Terminal:
sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
If you have a more recent Mac than me (late 2015 Macbook Pro), you might have to run the following command instead:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Because we are using sudo
here, you will be prompted to enter your
system password.
Be sure to have it available!
The command will take you into the hosts
file via your Nano
(Command Line Text) Editor. For example, there I saw a whole bunch of my
sites’ IP addresses,
including those for various variations of
interglobalmedianetwork.com.
Since I didn’t need any of them anymore, I simply
removed them. The hosts
file has instructions as to what you can edit and
should not. Read them carefully.
Next I had to save my changes and exit Nano, so I first typed the following on my keyboard:
control-o + enter (return)
This saved my changes in the hosts
file. Then to exit Nano, I typed the
following on my keyboard:
control-x
This command took me back to the Terminal window.
Then I typed https://www.interglobalmedianetwork.com
in the Chrome
address bar
and my site appeared! Of course this step can be reproduced in the
browser of your choosing.
Happy site propagation!
Related Resources

Created by Maria D. Campbell who lives and works in New York City building and teaching useful things. You should follow her on Twitter.