Well, since this is the first time I setup my own private hosted blog. I caught by a very stupid mistake made by myself. I want to temporary redirect my root domain (http://ooiks.com) to my blog which is in one of the dictionary (https://ooiks.com/blog/). I set my domain to forward http://ooiks.com to https://ooiks.com/blog/ through godaddy.com without realizing big trouble waiting me ahead.

After the domain server update my setting, I not longer can access to my blog any more. It keep on showing “This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later“. At first I though my hosting server is down or domain server is down, but after that I realize that I’m wrong. Search around for solution but I can’t found any. Finally from a post, I realize my problem is domain caught in a loop. Since the post does not have any solution, so I have to solve it myself. After much thinking, I only realize the meaning of caught in a loop. By forwarding my root domain to subdirectory, it will caught in loop since my subdirectory (https://ooiks.com/blog/) also contain root domain (http://ooiks.com) in the path, thus it will keep on forwarding non-stop.

Enough of the story, so how to solve this problem. First remove the forwarding so that it will stop the loop. Some users report that even remove the forwarding the problem still occur, so it is better to reset the domain including the domain nameserver (DNS).  Finally, wait a while for the domain server to update, then the problem should go away.

After learning the mistaken, I only remember using HTML redirect in default page on my website is the correct way to do the job. Add the line below on the default page on the website to redirect any visitor from root domain (http://domain.com) to subdirectory (http://example.com/blog/).

<meta HTTP-EQUIV=”REFRESH” content=”0; url=http://example.com/blog/”>

Hope this post can other who just setup their own website and encounter the same mistake like me.

by Ooi Keng Siang via Ooiks’s Blog