A Troubleshooting Guide for Domain Mapping

Root domains

      Example: example.com, sample.in, example.co.in.

Non-root domains

      Example: www.example.com, www.sample.in, web.example.com.

How to determine a connection error?

1. Open the domain in the browser.
   
2. Check the URL in the browser. It should be https:// and not http://
3. Read the message
   
1. When you see “site can not reached” or “can’t connect to the server”
   
1. We can conclude that the domain is not configured properly.
   
2. Check if the domain is configured properly with Sites.
2. When you see “security risk ahead” or “connection is not private”
1. When the configuration is proper, we can conclude it is an SSL certificate error.
2. Otherwise, the domain has to be configured as per the on screen instructions.
   

How to determine if a domain is a root domain?

1. Replace <domain-name> with the domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/NS
   
2. Open the link in a browser. 
   
3. If it returns NS records, the domain is a root domain.

How to determine if a root domain is configured properly?

1. Replace <domain-name> with the domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/A
   
2. Open the link in a browser. 
3. Check the IP Address returned is the same as the respective Data Center's Sites IP address.
   

How to get Sites IP address?

1. Replace <zhs.zohosites.com> with zhs.zohosites.eu or zhs.zohosites.in to correspond with the respective Data Centre. https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/zhs.zohosites.com/A
   
2. Open the page in a browser.
   
3. Sites IP will be returned.

Note: The IP address of a site should not be configured directly in domain mapping, as it changes dynamically

Caution: A record should be configured only with the CNAME flattening method. Every DNS provider has a different name for this. It may be called ANAME or CNAME. When a provider doesn’t support CNAME flattening, there will not be ANAME record support and CNAME record is not allowed on the root domain.

How to determine if a non-root domain is configured properly?

1. Replace <domain-name> with the customer domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/CNAME. Include whatever prefix the customer uses in <domain-name>, www is the most common prefix. Some customers may use other prefixes.
2. Open the link in the browser.
3. Check the points to value. It should be the respective Data Center's Sites CNAME zhs value. Eg., zhs.zohosites.com , zhs.zohosites.eu, ..
4. Find the root domain of the customer domain.
1. Check the customer domain without a prefix until you find the root domain. Remove subsequent prefixes one by one until you reach the root domain.
2. Follow “How to determine if a domain is a root domain?” to find the root domain
5. Replace <domain-name> with verification token + customer root domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/CNAME
6. Open the link in a browser.
7. Check the points to value. It should be the respective Data Center's Sites CNAME zhs value. Eg., zhs.zohosites.com, zhs.zohosites.eu, ..