Website not working, though FTP is fine

I noticed this morning that my website wasn't working. I recieved the usual error message through IE when a website isn't working. After a while, refreshing my site, I'm now recieving this message:

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: "bad_httpd_conf"


My site is hosted through Dreamhost, but the domain name is from GoDaddy.com. I contacted GoDaddy and they said it was a Dreamhost problem. I've yet to hear back from Dreamhost, as I contacted their tech department through email.

Does anyone know what's going on or has had this problem before?? I have another website hosted through Dreamhost with the domain name from GoDaddy, and it's working fine. I can get into the FTP just fine as well, but none of my pages or my files/images are appearing.

Please help!!

peregrintook310 -

Sounds like our setup is exactly the same...hosting on dreamhost and domain through godaddy. I am having the same issues as you. I can access FTP, change or create files, etc. but my site doesn't load. I have also emailed dreamhost, and have yet to hear from them. I would be willing to bet that it is a server problem (which hopefully they are working on)

Are both of your sites hosted on the same server in dreamhost? If not, that could explain why one is working and the other is not.

Do you know the dreamhost name for the server of the site that is down?

That's funny we have the same set up! And yes, both of my sites are hosted on the same server.

I just recieved an email back from a DH tech saying it was a fault on their end for not updating my DNS. This is probably the same problem you're having. If you've already email them, then they should reply back to you shortly. I don't know how long it takes from the DNS to be completely updated, because my site is still down, but I've found out this is a common problem amoung DH hostees: http://matthom.com/archive/2006/10/16/a-quick-dreamhost-site-error-fix

I'm pretty sure DH will fix it, but if not, the site above has a way to rectify it.

Hope your website is back online shortly!

Thanks for that tip. I am going to go ahead and try this because I need my site up an hour ago!!

Well that didn't work. I have still not heard back from dreamhost either. I guess it's a sit and wait thing now. I've double checked all my settings and everything appears to be in order. Is yours back up and running yet?

So the Wiki trick didn't work? (Go into Edit Domain, do nothing, but Save Changes).

What's the URL of your site?

-Scott

Wiki trick didn't work.

URL is madisonyr.com

Also, just noticed that my favicon is still showing up on the browser tab...that's unusual.

I'm getting a Database Error when I visit the site.

A WHOIS lookup for madisonyr.com shows that you are still using the domaincontrol.com name servers, which is not advisable when it's actually hosted at DreamHost. I suggest you use the DreamHost servers so your DNS info stays up to date.

Your favicon showing up is probably due to a browser cache of favicons. I get it, but a database error shows that I at least hit the index page.

-Scott

I'm also getting a database error when I visit my site. like others my FTP works just fine, and I'm not seeing any issues when I do a whois

See if you can log into your database with phpMyAdmin. Just pointing your browser at your database server works just as well. Then log in with your DB User and Password.

-Scott

@ sdayman

Thanks for the advise on the name servers. I could have sworn that I had already done that, but it is fixed now.

Just out of curiosity, why would that create a problem if it has worked fine for 2-3 months? This is a little out of my range of understanding.

Hi Scott, Thanks for your help but I can't log in using phpMyAdmin either, I keep get an authentication error.

Check your DB username and password in the panel:
MySQL Databases. Click on the User with Access. At the bottom you'll see the password. See if that's what you're using to log in.

-Scott

My website is working but my blog in the same domain isn't. The same thing happened last night, I get a '500 Internal Server Error'. I'm sick of all the down times, and those are just the ones that I know of.

By the way, I just signed up for a website that lets you know every time your site goes down: montastic.com. I don't know good it works but I want to know Dreamhost has a outage, which seems to happen very often.