Mobile version of website

It looks like your DNS and hosting are both at godaddy. I would definitely check there first.

The “mobile” subdomain is probably a default subdomain that you magically get when you sign up with a domain through them. I have a client who had a very bizarre domain forwarding issue based on what godaddy was doing at the DNS level, and I’m curious if maybe they are doing something similar in your case. Their system may be doing a mobile device detect before deciding whether to keep the request on www or send the user to “mobile” instead.

It’s just a theory, but it’s definitely where I would start if I were you. WP isn’t going to do that by default, and you’ve already ruled out the theme by talking to the author.

Good luck!

Hi Dave

Thanks for replying.

I logged into my friends GoDaddy “Hosting Control Center”

and when I looked down the list of DNS entries I saw a record called “mobile” that pointed to ghd-mobile.dudamobile.com

See screen shot here: https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/DNS_zps7c61ded5.jpg

So I checked out dudamobile.com they offer a Freemium service to convert a traditional website into a mobile friendly version of your website.

So I deleted the DNS record for mobile. It said please allow 48 hours to update. I assume once the DNS servers have updated my friends website will no longer redirect to the mobile subdomain?

I am also assuming of course there has been no javascript inserted anywhere to force a redirect.

I dug around on the dudamobile website and found this page:

https://www.dudamobile.com/redirect/go-daddy

It tells people how to insert Javascript into index.html/php to make your site redirect to the mobile subdomain

I checked index.php, wp-blog-header.php, wp-load.php, wp-config.php but but I cant find any redirect code within them.

Do you have any idea what php file is most likely to have the javascript inside it? (if at all)

Thanks very much.

OK so a quick update

Deleting the DNS record for mobile simply made the website unavailable on smartphones and tablets. (Doh! as Homer would say)

So I’ve added a record for mobile that points to midi-photography.net

Once the DNS resets in 1 hour or so I will know if it works or not.

I will post back the outcome.

Cheers.

Sounds like you’re almost there! And yes, deleting the mobile subdomain is a good idea only once you’ve successfully STOPPED sending people to it ?? Better to have people land on a bogus page than a dead domain.

Are you working with anyone else, or is it just you? What’s interesting is that it seems like SOMEONE intentionally set this up. GoDaddy can give you all the free subdomains it wants, but nothing is going to “accidentally” implement a javascript include in your WordPress code for you – unless… did you install WP as an “app” from GoDaddy? Knowing that you’re hosted with them, it’s possible they’re doing something weird/magic on you.

The JS include is likely going to be inside one of your theme files, not a core WP file. Check /wp-content/themes/YOURTHEME/header.php – that would be my best guess on where you’ll probably find it.

If you really struggle to find it, download a full copy of your whole WordPress install (if you don’t already have one) and use a program like Notepad++ that allows you to “Find in Files”. You can target the entire directory, plug in your search string (“dudamobile.com”) and you should be able to find it then.

Good luck!

Hi Dave

Sorry for my (very) slow reply.

I have uploaded a few screenshots to Photobucket to help explain the problem.

Yes there is just me (semi technical) trying to help my friend (non technical) who owns the website.

We telephoned GoDaddy and they advised us to delete the mobile sub-domain DNS record. All this resulted in was a completely dead web-page. We’d already tried this before and it didn’t work. Despite GoDaddys advice to wait 1, 2, 24 then 48 hours for the DNS servers to “release a record” / “refresh themselves” This is all we saw:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/01-webpagenotavailable_zps1f75cdd8.jpg

I Googled the problem and a few people said when GoDaddy creates a “webspace” for you on a VPS they add stuff to your htaccess file to point to DudaMobile. (They must have struck a deal) Sure enough when I looked inside the htaccess this is what I saw:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/02-htaccessbefore_zps641f7e5e.jpg

To refresh your memory we don’t want midi-photography.net to redirect to mobile.midi-photography.net as DudaMobile want $6/$7 per month to remove the adverts that they insert into the mobile version of the webpage.

So I tried commenting out the offending code. This is what I did:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/03-htaccessafter_zps0e9d7097.jpg

I assume the double ## is a comment ???

Anyway all that resulted in was instead of being redirected to the DudaMobile page we now see a webpage with just “pageok” in the top left hand corner. See here:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/06-pageok_zps0763f3a7.jpg

I dug around on the internet and someone suggested modifying the DNS record of mobile.midi-photography.net rather than deleting it.

So I reset my DNS records to their original settings, see here:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/04-DNSsettingsbefore_zpsf21f2494.jpg

and once again the unwanted re-direct to DudaMobile was reinstated.

So I then modified the DNS record as per the suggestion to make the mobile sub-domain point at the @ record i.e the IP address of the web server. (I didn’t have much hope that this would work as the website is hosted on a shared (VPS) server. The modification I made is highlighted here:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/05-DNSsettingsafter_zps9112c54f.jpg

Sure enough we got the “pageok” page once again. See here:

https://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i395/LordLiverpool/06-pageok_zps0763f3a7.jpg

We asked GoDaddy for FTP credentials in order to be able to download the website and search it with Notepad++ but they gave us the same FTP credentials as before that don’t have the necessary permissions and said they were the only FTP credentials available to us.

We asked GoDaddy why the redirect was still occurring, they gave the same answer. Wait up to 48 hours for the DNS to refresh.

I cant help but concluded that GoDaddy employs people who don’t know enough about web-servers to able to help their customers.

Finally on the Dudamobile website I found two pieces of help:

https://support.dudamobile.com/01DudaMobile/Redirect_and_Custom_Domain/How_to_uninstall_the_mobile_redirect

https://support.dudamobile.com/01DudaMobile/Redirect_and_Custom_Domain/Alternate_and_Other_Automatic_Redirection_Scripts

I tried to follow the advice contained there.

I dont have a DudaMobile plugin installed.

There is no javascript redirect code in the index.php (or any other pages I looked in) that remotely resembles anything like what they have mentioned on that page.

I even tried modifying the htaccess file to make the redirect point back to the main site. This just resulted in the “pageok” page.

I am at a loss as to what to do next. Other than moving the website to a different VPS that I have that’s not hosted by GoDaddy and therefore should be free of this tampering.

I hope I have made myself clear (as mud!)

Thanks in advance

Best Regards

Can anyone help me on this?

Hi LordLiverpool,

I have a very similar issue as yours (and GoDaddy’s customer service has been less than UNusefull).

I still don’t know where the heck the redirect comes from. I didn’t even have the dudamobile code in my .htaccess file! (only the DNS records pointing to it, which I changed in order for the mobile subdomain to point at @ – just like you did).

I had been getting the pageok blank page until I found this:

https://blog.arunkumar.biz/enabling-wordpress-multisites-sub-domains-godaddy/

Now my mobile subdomain shows the content on the general domain, because it is pointed there. But the redirection is still occuring and, since I have no idea what is provoking that redirection, I ca’t stop it from happening.

I just wanted to share that turnaround with you so at least your mobile visitors will see something and not the dreaded pageok page.

I hope we find what the culprit is so we can finally get rid of that unwanted mobile redirection…

Hi Chicadieta

I am sorry I couldn’t be of any help to you, but I tried everything I could think of to fix this.

I posted the same question on Stackoverflow here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26758629/godaddy-unwanted-redirect-to-dudamobile But I got no response.

I tried creating an A record to make the mobile subdomain point back to the main domain, I was prepared to live with the redirect when viewing on a mobile, so long as the visitors didn’t see the dudamobile version of the site, plastered with adverts. But this just resulted in the dreaded “pageok” for me. Thats when I tried editing the .htaccess and trawling the website for javascript in any of the WordPress files. No luck anywhere.

My solution? I ended up making a permanent redirect (301) from my friends GoDaddy webserver https://midi-photography.net to my 123-Reg webserver https://midi-photography.co.uk

This solved two issues:

1. It bypassed all the GoDaddy settings.
2. It allowed my friend to take the opportunity to register a .co.uk domain rather than his original and less popular .net domain.

(I appreciate this second point is off topic, but I’ve added this to explain the entire situation, just in case you happened to click on any of the links in my previous posts and became confused.)

Once the hosting expires with GoDaddy, we will never use them ever again! 30 minutes on hold to reach someone who hasn’t got a clue is just wonderful customer service!

So unfortunately this one got away from me.

Thanks for your reply.

Best Regards

LordLiverpool

Hi LordLiverpool,

I completely understand and relate (I was also prepared to live with the mobile redirect as long as the visitors would see a real page – which is what I achieved after cr4eating the subdomain in the hosted domains panel as described in the link I gave above).

Later yesterday I ended up going back to GoDaddy’s support, this time with the live chat (I had a very dissapointing phone conversation earlier with someone who not only didn’t know what I was talking about but blamed it all on me for having installed wordpress on my own).

Anyway, the person in the chat took a look at my problem and in less than 5 minutes told me they were going to solve it (this one seemed to be aware of the issue). She asked me to wait 24 hours for the changes to “take full effect”.

One hour later my problem was completely solved. I can now visit my site from my cellphone and I’m NOT redirected to the mobile subdomain!

So I suggest you ask live chat support to solve that for you too. I hope that helps!

Mary

Over the last year this has been a huge issue for me as well with my wife’s site. Thank you Chicadieta it is now fixed. GoDaddy chat was the answer. 40 minutes later and the site is working normally!!

I just wanted to confirm that if you get the RIGHT person at GoDaddy (on my 9th call I spoke to a person called Rick M) who understands the problem (i.e. that something in the hosting account is doing this; it definitely is NOT wordpress) then they can submit a ticket and an admin-level person can fix your account so that the mobile subdomain does not automatically redirect to something weird. Rick M told me that I had a very unusual case, but that he had seen 3 of them in the last month. As Chicadieta said, once the admin got a hold of it, the change appeared really fast (prob <1 hr, I wasn’t checking continuously).