There are a number of reasons why services at your domain might not be working:
1) Are the problems you are having in just your website or just your email services?
- If your emails are not working but your website is, check the Why are my emails not working? entry in our FAQ
- If your website is not working but your emails are, check the Why is my website not working? entry in our FAQ
2) If you are having problems with all services at your domain then work through the following checklist of common issues:
- Has your domain expired? Domains that have not been renewed will be suspended by the registry. You may still be able to place a late renewal in this case so log in to your Only Domains account to check the expiry date for your domain from the 'My Domains' and the 'Expired Domains' area.
- Has your hosting service expired? Remember that domain name registration (the right of use of a domain name) and hosting (access to and space on a web and/or email server) are separate services and need to be renewed separately. If you have hosting with us you can check the expiry date for your hosting service from the 'My Hosting' area of your Only Domains user account. If you have hosting services at another provider you will need to contact them to check the expiry date for your hosting services.
- Have you just recently completed a delegation or just registered your domain? Some registries take longer than others to make DNS changes or activate domains in their zone for the first time. After the registry has delegated your domain, remember that any DNS change is subject to propagation over local DNS server caches, which usually takes up to 24 hours.
- Is your domain delegated to the right name servers at the registry? Check the WHOIS to make sure the correct name servers are listed to your domain. Please note that some registries have name server configuration requirements and so if you have submitted a delegation with us that isn't showing at the WHOIS it may have been rejected by the registry; we will have notified you via email in this case so please check your emails and also check this FAQ for further details regarding DNS requirements for specific domain extensions.
- Are your name servers working and do they have the correct zone records in place? Even if your domain is delegated to the right name servers at the registry, if these name servers aren't set up to answer for your domain your domain will not resolve and none of the services at your domain will function correctly. If you are familiar with tools such as dig (domain information groper) or nslookup you can query your name servers and see if they are answering queries for your domain and resolving services at your domain to the right place or not; or contact your name server provider for assistance in checking.
- Are your web and email servers working? If you are having problems with all services at your domain but the domain and hosting are renewed and the DNS settings for the domain look to be correct, it might be that the server or servers hosting your services might be having issues or you might not be able to connect to them from your location. Check out our other FAQs related to web and email hosting issues, e.g. Why are my emails not working? & Why is my website not working?