A Troubleshooting Guide for Domain Mapping
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?
Open the domain in the browser.
- Check the URL in the browser. It should be https:// and not http://
- Read the message
- When you see “site can not reached” or “can’t connect to the server”
- We can conclude that the domain is not configured properly.
- Check if the domain is configured properly with Sites.
- When you see “security risk ahead” or “connection is not private”
- When the configuration is proper, we can conclude it is an SSL certificate error.
- Otherwise, the domain has to be configured as per the on screen instructions.
How to determine if a domain is a root domain?
Replace <domain-name> with the domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/NS
Open the link in a browser.
If it returns NS records, the domain is a root domain.
How to determine if a root domain is configured properly?
Replace <domain-name> with the domain in the following link https://www.zoho.com/toolkit/ns-lookup.html#domainDetails/<domain-name>/A
- Open the link in a browser.
- Check the IP Address returned is the same as the respective Data Center's Sites IP address.
How to get Sites IP address?
- 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
- Open the page in a browser.
- 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?
- 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.
- Open the link in the browser.
- Check the points to value. It should be the respective Data Center's Sites CNAME zhs value. Eg., zhs.zohosites.com , zhs.zohosites.eu, ..
- Find the root domain of the customer domain.
- 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.
- Follow “How to determine if a domain is a root domain?” to find the root domain
- 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
- Open the link in a browser.
- Check the points to value. It should be the respective Data Center's Sites CNAME zhs value. Eg., zhs.zohosites.com, zhs.zohosites.eu, ..