How do I stop my domain from mapping to my wordpress.com site?
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I recently (1/2/13) cancelled domain mapping of michiganruralcouncil.org to the site miruralnetwork.wordpress.com. I updated the nameservers for the .org domain to point to my new site (rural.cedam.info) via standard URL forwarding through my domain registrar. The forwarding works fine when I DON’T have the old site cached, but michiganruralcouncil.org continues to point to the wordpress.com site in browsers where it IS cached.
Obviously I can clear my own browsers and see the new site, but what about all the other users who have michiganruralcouncil.org cached? Is there a way to force the forwarding to work? Would deleting the wordpress.com site help? I don’t think it’s realistic to get every repeat visitor to the site to clear their browser cache, but I need them to see the new site and the new content.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I took a look and everything is working properly. Note that it might take up to 24-72 hours before nameserver changes are fully propagated. Could you please give it another try?
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Well, that’s the thing. It looks fine and the changes are propagated, but it’s cached in my browser (hard refresh doesn’t work – clearing cache does) – so it’s probably cached for others as well. It works for you because you never visited the site before. I’m afraid it’s this kind of situation. Is wordpress.com domain mapping based on 301 redirects?
(Thanks for your response!)
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Shoot. I just noticed that my original post says “The blog I need help with is onehourwebsites.wordpress.com.” I didn’t write that and it’s not true.
However, I did put the wrong address for the wordpress.com site I was referring to…. oops. It’s michiganruralnetwork.wordpress.com (not miruralnetwork).
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Yes – sorry about all the domain confusion. Here’s what’s happening:
- michiganruralcouncil.org should now point to rural.cedam.info (no wordpress.com mapping).
- michiganruralcouncil.org used to point to michiganruralnetwork.wordpress.com using wordpress.com mapping, but it should not any more.
- In any browser that has visited the site before, when domain mapping was active, michiganruralcouncil.org still redirects to the wordpress.com site. This happens in Chrome, Firefox and IE, on all computers in our office, and we have had reports from offsite users that the same thing is happening.
- In any browser that has not visited the site before, or after the browser’s cache is cleared, michiganruralcouncil.org redirects to the new, correct site.
I hope that helps.
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Also, to be clear, clearing the browser’s cached does solve the problem. My concern is that not every visitor will have recently cleared their cache.
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There’s nothing we can do about that on our end. Cache usually expires depending on the user’s browser settings. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Hi there,
Unfortunately, since the individual browsers are what are caching, there’s nothing much you can do. Fortunately, caches do expire! So the browser will check for fresh info at intervals. What this means is that if you have a user who checks the site every few hours, they may have an issue for a few hours after you update your domain. A user who checks once a month will likely never see an issue.
The mapping itself takes from a few minutes to a few hours to propagate across the web, so immediately following the mapping or unmapping is the most “confusing” time, for users. You can mitigate this a bit by timing your mapping for “off hours” like late at night or the weekend – whenever traffic to your site is slowest.
Does this help?
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Thanks for the replies – I’ll mark this as resolved.
I do try to time my domain mapping for off hours, so I’ll keep doing that. Otherwise, I’ll just cross my fingers that caches will expire soon for most people.
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