Troubleshoot DNS When a Website or Email Stops Working in LaGrange

DNS connects a domain name to several independent services.

When the website or email stops working after a DNS change, the safe approach is to identify which service failed and which records that service actually uses.

Start with the nameservers

Nameservers determine which DNS provider is authoritative for the domain.

If the registrar points to one DNS provider while someone edits records in another, those changes will not control the public domain.

Confirm the authoritative zone first.

Separate website records from mail records

At a practical level:

• A and AAAA records commonly point names to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses;
• CNAME records commonly alias one hostname to another;
• MX records identify mail-exchange destinations;
• TXT records are often used for verification and email-authentication policies.

The exact combination depends on the providers involved.

Identify what is actually broken

Test the website and email separately.

If the website fails while mail works, focus on the web records and web server.

If incoming mail fails after nameserver changes, compare the current MX and supporting records with the mail provider's required configuration.

If everything fails, the authoritative DNS delegation itself deserves attention.

Preserve unrelated records

Do not replace the entire zone because one service is malfunctioning.

Export or document the existing records before editing and change only what the diagnosis supports.

Allow for caching

DNS answers may remain cached until their TTL expires.

A recent correction can therefore appear inconsistent across different resolvers for a period of time.

For a related next step, see Fix Website Email That Lands in Spam in Queen City and Troubleshoot Contact Forms That Never Arrive in Memphis.

For authoritative guidance on this subject, see Cloudflare's DNS record reference.

See Also

• Set Up Domain-Based Business Email in Greentop

Switchboard can help LaGrange and Northeast Missouri businesses map website and email dependencies before changing DNS so one repair does not create a second outage.