HELP: Site switches between shared hosting and cloud hosting

I am currently experiencing the most bizarre occurrence in over 10 years of using a web host (shared, and most recently, Cloud) to host my Wordpress sites.

I recently upgraded from shared hosting to cloud hosting, and had the host support team migrate my files and databases. After the successful migration process, I pointed my domain nameservers to the cloud server, and everything worked perfectly for a short while.

Then I started experiencing what I can't seem to fathom. My site started loading content from the shared server and cloud server intermittently. Sometimes it loads the old shared hosting content and sometimes it loads the new cloud hosting content.

I have cleared the site's cache, cleared browser cookies to no avail. Even users get the same error, so it must be something with the server, and not user's browser.

I contacted the host to investigate and advised them to clear/disable all server-side cache which they did. They even suspended the shared hosting account to make sure its contents are not loaded, but now when the strange switch occurs, my users see an Account Suspended screen, which means that the site still tries to load the shared hosting server contents.

Has anyone ever experienced this before? Please I need help, and this is affecting business negatively. Thanks

ISPs can also cache dns

That must be dns caching. Change your dns to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8. tht should update your domain's records quicker.

Gogol said:

That must be dns caching. Change your dns to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8. tht should update your domain's records quicker.

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Thanks a lot for the help bro. At least I'm relieved a bit that someone knows what the problem could be.

Please, how can I change the DNS?

seamate said:

Thanks a lot for the help bro. At least I'm relieved a bit that someone knows what the problem could be.

Please, how can I change the DNS?

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When I said change the DNS, I meant change the DNS for your internet connection. The DNSes I mention about refreshes the cache quicker than let's say.. your ISP's own dns server.

As for changing the DNS, it depends on your infrastructure.

If you have a router, then login to your router. Go to connection settings, and look for the place where you enter your IP address, subnet mask etc. Change the Primary and secondary DNSes from there (backup first. Some providers require you to have their DNS servers in order to login properly).

If you use the connection directly from your computer, then go to your Ethernet settings. From there, open the lan connection you are using. Then go to IPv4 settings, and change the servers from there.


Now, this is for your site; and not your local connection. The time lag happens because of the TTL value you set when you add a DNS record (let's say, an A record). The less the TTL is, quicker it is propagated. So, try to set the least time as possible from there.

Another possibility is that you are using a dns level caching service like cloudflare. In that case, go to cloudflare settings, and purge the existing cache from there.

Gogol said:

When I said change the DNS, I meant change the DNS for your internet connection. The DNSes I mention about refreshes the cache quicker than let's say.. your ISP's own dns server.

As for changing the DNS, it depends on your infrastructure.

If you have a router, then login to your router. Go to connection settings, and look for the place where you enter your IP address, subnet mask etc. Change the Primary and secondary DNSes from there (backup first. Some providers require you to have their DNS servers in order to login properly).

If you use the connection directly from your computer, then go to your Ethernet settings. From there, open the lan connection you are using. Then go to IPv4 settings, and change the servers from there.


Now, this is for your site; and not your local connection. The time lag happens because of the TTL value you set when you add a DNS record (let's say, an A record). The less the TTL is, quicker it is propagated. So, try to set the least time as possible from there.

Another possibility is that you are using a dns level caching service like cloudflare. In that case, go to cloudflare settings, and purge the existing cache from there.

Click to expand...

But he wrote he already changed DNS locally.
For DNS flushing in ISPs routers that are in-the-way you just have to wait, it can take some time.
Meantime you can f.e. RDP to some VPS (or use proxy) that never connected to your site and check if it always gets good site.

michiosha1 said:

But he wrote he already changed DNS locally.

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I can't see where.

This is also a good reason why non scalable servers are bad. If it was a scalable one e.g. digital ocean... OP could just have increased the resources and did a restart..and voila!

Gogol said:

I can't see where.

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My bad, he just wrote about cookies, so yea, flushing dns locally may be sufficient to solve an issue.

Gogol said:

Wow, this is for your site; and not your local connection. The time lag happens because of the TTL value you set when you add a DNS record (let's say, an A record). The less the TTL is, quicker it is propagated. So, try to set the least time as possible from there.

Another possibility is that you are using a dns level caching service like cloudflare. In that case, go to cloudflare settings, and purge the existing cache from there.

Click to expand...

Yes, I use Cloudflare, and the TTL was set to 1 month. I had changed this to the least time there (30 minutes), hoping it would solve the problem. Perhaps it did for a while, but I experienced the problems a few times several hours after I changed this setting. The problem's persistence after changing the TTL may have been caused by another kind of cache - browser, plugin (wp-rocket), maybe, but I cleared these severally too.

Later, my I received a message from my host that the site's switching to the old shared hosting happens because I added my site to Cloudflare when I was still on the shared hosting, but this doesn't seem to make sense to me, since I removed the site from Cloudflare completely and cleared the cache during troubleshooting.

The problem seems to have disappeared now, but I am still watching it, as it popped up again once in the past hour. So far, the only action has possibly made the biggest impact is changing the TTL on Cloudflare.

Thanks bro!

Thanks mates, for your help! I ruled out local DNS caching as the probable cause of the problem because my users had the same issue when they visited my site, so I tried other options like changing the TTL on Cloudflare, getting the shared hosting suspended to streamline the source of the problem, etc.

I will update this thread if anything new comes up.

I really appreciate your support.