topic Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Landing Pages going to weird URL

GWhiteley — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:16:00 GMT

I'm using Hubspot solely for Landing Pages, for now. My website is separate and I don't recall ever having created a link from Hubspot to my website.

Suddenly today, after editing and publishing a new Landing Page, I'm getting errors saying I'm not authorised to publish (that went away) and later a system message saying there are errors in my DNS records. Then it leads me to a page saying "Copy the required data sets below and paste them into the appropriate record fields at your domain provider's site".

My domain provider is Bluehost and Google, as far as I know I've never been (nor do I want/need to be) connected between Hubspot and my main website.

I have no idea where or how to do this, nor do I know why it's occurred, as all I've been doing is creating and editing a new Landing Page.

Help, please.

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

CateDuarte — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:31:52 GMT

Hi @GWhiteley what is the domain you are using for your Landing Pages. You'll need to have added a domain to be able to pusblish the LPs. Maybe the error is from there and nothing related to the website?

If you go to Settings / Website / Domains & URLs is everything ok there or any error?

If I understood correctly.

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

GWhiteley — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 03:57:05 GMT

Thanks, Catarina for your response. I openly admit to being way out of my depth.

Yesterday I was creating a new Landing Page which, despite the various editor app bugs (or my lack of ability), I was able to complete the editing and was satisfied with the layout, however amateurish. But, when I went to publish, all **bleep** broke loose!

I was receiving messages that fields were incomplete, which were fixed after I went back over things like Meta Description, but also more problematic things like my account was unauthorised to publish (it isn't) and then this mysterious DNS error appeared. As far as I know, nothing has been changed at my ISP or domain host that would have altered DNS addresses, but that's pure amateur guesswork. Since my last successful publishing of earlier Landing Pages, I've not been anywhere near things such as DNS (wouldn't know what to do there in any case, other than my preferred primary and secondary DNS addresses in my Windows IPv4 settings and this hasn't changed from OpenDNS in years).

However, despite all these issues yesterday, this morning, all my pages are now showing as published, but when I click on the link it goes to a false page on my website with the message "Oops, something went wrong!" (I'd always been under the impression - obviously falsely - that my Landing Pages were hosted at Hubspot, not my main website domain, but that's just an aside. Obviously this must have been setup previously when I first started experimenting with Hubspot. But now, I'm lost as to how to fix this - I don't understand how/where to change these DNS IP addresses on my hosting site/s (Bluehost for content and Google for domain registration).

Looking at your suggestion re Settings / Website / Domains & URLs, I get the screen below and when I click on CONTINUE I'm presented with the puzzle about going to my host and changing the DNS IPs. Huh?

I'm lost here and need hand holding to fix this.

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

GWhiteley — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 04:25:22 GMT

I think I've fixed it, after prodding around in the dark and taking wild stabs at things way beyond my knowledge level. I guess time will tell whether I've correctly cracked the code.

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

GWhiteley — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 08:39:48 GMT

So, here I am having turned a full circle, still with the same symptoms but with a different twist. In short , my situation has moved on from Hubspot requiring changes to DNS settings that would allow me to publish a new Landing Page, to Outlook falling over because it can no longer see my incoming/outgoing mail server.

Before everyone jumps to the conclusion that this has nothing to do with Hubspot, hear me out.

The original issue was about Hubspot requiring me to change Google Domains DNS addresses, which I managed to stumble through despite the inadequate (and inaccurate) instructions on the Hubspot self help pages.

To add background, including the email situation, this is how I'm set up:

Google is my domain registrar, under a package including the usual Google trappings.
Bluehost is the front-end to my WordPress website. This includes Bluehost handling my domain email mailboxes (which, prior to this incident, were successfully connected to Outlook).
WordPress is my website development tool.

Bluehost has connection settings for Google and Outlook; Google has connection settings for Hubspot.

Now for the main bits of my problem.

After I fumbled my way yesterday through the Hubspot DNS imposition requiring changing DNS in Google and, with that working, I retired for the night only to wake this morning to find my Outlook had spat out my domain named email addresses. All my attempts to fix that failed, as Outlook could no longer connect to the IMAP mail server domain. I later deduced this was because the Google domain server now had different DNS addresses, courtesy of the previous day's Hubspot requirements.

So, as a paying customer of Bluehost I contacted their support. After much to-ing and fro-ing they flicked me off to Google Domains, who flicked me off to Google Workspace, where I was told I had to configure Outlook IMAP to use the gMail server. This is nonsense, as my email for this setup has always used the Bluehost config (which provides the link between the Google Domain mail server by passing it to Outlook).

The Workspace consultant then took me through some rapid fire settings changes to direct the IMAP Server to gMail. I asked why this was done, given that my system had been working for months using the domain name mail server, but I never really got an answer, as the consultant was eager to close off the case. She said she'd refer me back to the Workspace team but, here's the irony: I can't receive her email because of the invalid mail server settings. Catch 22!!

So, here I am, spinning around in circles between the 3 providers (counting Google as 2 of those), when this whole episode originated from Hubspot requiring a DNS change.

And I still don't know how to fix the fallout.

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

MiaSrebrnjak — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:33:57 GMT

Thank you so much for sharing the process above @GWhiteley! It'll help other users who might be facing a similar issue.

I hope everything still works as expected.

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

Re: Landing Pages going to weird URL

GWhiteley — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 01:03:24 GMT

P.S. After a very helpful session with Google Domains tech support, and my providing a copy of Hubspot instructions for Google Domains to relate the out of date, incomplete and inaccurate Hubspot instructions to the Google Domains DNS records management tool, we were able to insert 2 'TXT' records with the correct IP addresses and 1 'CNAME' record with the correct domain name settings. Shame on Hubspot for not maintaining those instructions to align with the Google Domains tool layout and terminology, as well as setting out the instructions in simple, step by step form that a non-tech like me can easily follow.

Further, despite the obsessive approach of the Google Workspace Gmail tech support who insisted my problem would be fixed by transferring my email desktop environment from Outlook to Gmail, it wasn't.

To sum up, after the rather lengthy but understandable propagation period (in this case almost 2 full days) my Outlook access (across Windows and Android devices) was restored, and Hubspot Marketing Landing Pages settings were no longer complaining that it couldn't publish because DNS settings were incorrect.

Very stressful and frustrating experience.