WordPress Isn’t Installing Properly

Hello Catezee,

What is the domain that you are working on, or having the issue with so we can check the DNS. If it is bringing you the ssquarespace’s websites, it sounds like your A Record is going to Squarespace instead of your new cPanel host.

So the way DNS works, to make it simple, is your Domain should have 2 or more Nameservers, those name servers have DNS zones which will control traffic for the domain (This includes e-mail, the MX record). If you are using squarespace’s nameservers for example, the DNS records there probably point your domain to them. If you have a new host provided now, and they have a cPanel, then they probably have Nameservers for you to use and you can use the cpanels DNS zone manager after you change your nameservers to theirs.

I can give you more information if you need it but the first step is probably just checking the DNS so we know what is going on. If you please provide the domain, I will do that with you.

Or go here https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#NS/
and type your domain and see what you get back.

If it is nameservers that need to be changed then that will be done with NetRegistry, the domain registrar. You get the nameservers from the cPanel server provider, they should be like ns1.hostingcompany.com ns2.hostingcompany.com usually. Then you go to NetRegistry account and it should have a place for custom nameservers so you can change them.

best of luck,

Jamison

Hi @jamisonb,

The domain is asianoutreach.org.au.

Thank you,

The nameservers are:
asianoutreach.org.au. 21557 IN NS ns-2.ezyreg.com.
asianoutreach.org.au. 21557 IN NS ns-1.ezyreg.com.

and your A records (where website traffic goes) is
asianoutreach.org.au. 14348 IN A 198.49.23.145
asianoutreach.org.au. 14348 IN A 198.185.159.145
asianoutreach.org.au. 14348 IN A 198.49.23.144

That means people go to those servers when they type your domain, and I checked those IPs, those are Squarespace, so that is why you are ending up at Squarespace when you do /wp-admin So the installer that you used, may actually be working correctly, so that is good.

You need to change your DNS for sure. There are 2 easy ways to get the result you want. I personally would change Nameservers, again the new host provider should be able to provide you information regarding their nameservers. This will also change your MX record, so if you have been using e-mail on the domain, things will get more complicated because you will need to recreate the MX record to keep it working.

The other method of fixing this would be changing the A records with ezyreg.com. I have never used them, but there is probably a place that says manage my DNS, and you should see the records I mentioned above, the A ones that have an IP. You will want them deleted and you will want to put in the new ones of your new server host. If it is cpanel, when you login there is a place that says ‘status’ I believe, and should give the IP of the server. You will then make an A record with your domain that goes to that IP.

DNS changes require propagation, which just means that changes sometimes have a delay but usually finish propagating within 24hrs.

Good luck, let me know if you need more help or information regarding this.

It seems Ezyreg nameservers might be MelbourneIT’s cpanel nameservers. If MelbourneIT with cPanel is who is now hosting the site and WordPress, you will need to update the DNS in your cPanel. (because I am assuming you are already using their DNS)

You get the IP for the cPanel as I said before, here is a link to an article on how to get it:
https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/cpanel/how-to-find-your-shared-ip-address-of-your-server-in-cpanel

Write that IP down or copy it to your clipboard, then go to the DNS zone manager, and you should see your domain going to those 3 A records.

under the column Record it should read those IPs I printed out earlier.
and should say type A record, name should be the domain name you provided me.
198.49.23.145
198.185.159.145
198.49.23.144

Delete 2 of them, and then when there is one left, click the edit button and change the Record to the IP I had you write down from inside the cPanel.

So, in the end, you have am A record that looks like

Name TTL Class Type Record
asianoutreach.org.au. 900 IN A XX.XX.XX.XX

Where the xx.xx.xx.xx is the cPanel IP.

@jamisonb, thank you, I’ll look into it. ??

@jamisonb, I’m a little confused; what do I change the nameservers to?

It depends. The easiest solution is to have the set to whatever the host provider tells you, because it is their name server. Whoever name servers you use, they are the authority of where the domain goes. Based on Google

https://support.melbourneit.com.au/articles/help/Melbourne-IT-Nameservers

you may already have the nameservers correct, but that is if you are using Melbourne IT for hosting and their cpanel. Since they advise to change to ns-2.ezyreg.com.
ns-1.ezyreg.com.

Which is what you already have. So if this is the case, then you have to login to the cpanel, go to the DNS Zone Manager, and change your A records as I advised earlier (delete to of the 3 A records you have already existing, and edit the 3rd one to be the IP of your cPanel), and you do not need to make any change to the nameservers, because it is already correct.

If the new host is not MelbourneIT, or you have reason to think the nameservers should be different, then you will want to look at the host providers support page, they will probably have somewhere where they advise of the nameservers to use.

Let me know if you are still a bit confused.

@jamisonb so I delete these 2 A records?

I’ve just deleted those two.

That is correct, those IPs are squarespace and the reason it is going there. If you delete those 2, there should be one A record left, which will also be squarespace, but then you can click edit and change the IP to the IP that shows in your cPanel and then traffic will start going to your cPanel hosting.

It will have to propagate (the changes are not instant) but there are ways to check to see if it is going to work once you made the change.

@jamisonb sorry for asking a lot of questions; I entered in the shared IP address that I saw on my cPanel home page for the A record. It was successfully edited.

You are fine ?? , okay, that should be all you need to do. Now wait a couple of hours and check it, you might need to clear your cache.

I just checked what response I got back from the nameservers.

dig @ns-2.ezyreg.com +short asianoutreach.org.au
27.121.67.152

if that is the IP you saw on the cPanel that say shared IP address, then you did perfectly.

Thank you very much for your help and time, @jamisonb! ?? I’ll check WordPress tomorrow.

Actually, I think I am seeing an issue with the installation. We are waiting for propagation, so we are unable to use the conventional method to access your site.

but I checked the sites from different locations to see if it had propagated. I did that with the tool here:
https://geopeeker.com/fetch/?url=asianoutreach.org.au&csrf_token=MWjBVZd%2Fk8zLFSE40jz1IPM%2F5HbkEfHrgsl%2FkciYutM%3D

The screenshot it is returning is a listing of files, none of those files are a WordPress installation.

You might want to go to the cPanel, and then go to the Icon file manager, so you can see what files are on the server.

You are looking for 3 directories, wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes and a few files like index.php, wp-config.php

If you do not see them, then the tool you used probably failed to install WordPress. It is also possible that the installation was put in a sub folder so I am just missing it. If the tool of your host provider will not install WP successfully, then you can manually install WordPress, it isn’t hard.

Here is a simple guide on how you install WordPress Manually:
https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/wordpress/wordpress-introduction/installing-wordpress-manually

Okay, I’ll try installing it with Installatron again.