New Light Sail Instance

Setting up a new Lightsail instance with Plesk and configuring DNS settings for domains can indeed be tricky, especially if you're handling multiple configurations across different services (AWS, Namecheap, and Plesk). Here’s a step-by-step checklist to help you troubleshoot and ensure all your settings are correctly configured:

Verify Namecheap Domain Settings

First, ensure that your domain names registered with Namecheap are correctly pointing to the Amazon Lightsail DNS servers.

• Log in to your Namecheap account.
• Navigate to the domain management area.
• Set the DNS to Namecheap's default DNS servers or to the custom DNS provided by AWS, depending on where you are managing your DNS records. Since you mentioned using Amazon's DNS, make sure that the records there (ns1, ns2, ns3, ns4) are accurately configured in Namecheap's custom DNS settings.

Check AWS Lightsail DNS Zone Setup

If you are managing DNS within Lightsail, you'll need to set up and verify DNS zones:

• Go to the Networking tab in Lightsail.
• Check if DNS zones for your domains have been created.
• If not, create DNS zones for each domain and ensure that you add records that point to your Lightsail instance (A, MX, CNAME, etc., as necessary).
• Once DNS zones are set up in Lightsail, AWS provides you with a set of name servers. Update these in Namecheap if you are using Lightsail to manage DNS.

Configure DNS in Plesk

Since you are using Plesk within Lightsail:

• Log into the Plesk panel.
• Ensure that your domains are listed in Plesk and check if Plesk shows any DNS settings.
• Plesk might have its own DNS settings which should generally sync with what’s set in Lightsail if DNS is managed there.
• If you are using Plesk to manage DNS, ensure that the records in Plesk match what you intend (pointing to the static IP of your instance, etc.).

DNS Propagation

• DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate worldwide. Use tools like DNS Checker to check if the DNS records for your domains are propagating correctly.
• Check again after a few hours to see if the records have started to propagate.

Static IP Address

• Verify that your Lightsail instance is indeed attached to a static IP address.
• Ensure that the A record for your domain points to this static IP address.

Testing and Debugging

• Use command line tools such as ping, dig, or nslookup to test DNS resolution.

  dig yourdomain.com

• Check for errors and ensure that the responses reflect the changes you have made.

Rebooting and Services

• Since you have rebooted multiple times, ensure all services within Plesk are running, especially the DNS service if it’s being managed by Plesk.

Contact Support

• If problems persist, consider reaching out to AWS support, Namecheap support, or consulting Plesk documentation and support channels.

By ensuring each step is correctly set up and giving time for DNS propagation, your DNS issues should resolve. If not, detailed error messages or logs from Plesk and Lightsail will be necessary to further diagnose the issue.

Here is what I have for all the dns points.

Plesk gives me all the records ns1, ns2, mail, etc, a record, cname, they all point to my public ip wth Amazon. I think I even have a directory setup as well within plesk. So if I am pointing everything to the ip address, I am super confused. Plesk has assigned everything to the ip address of the server.

it appears that amazon lightsail does not like the hometown domain. I now have one .com domain that I am slowly trying to get online.

do I need to put in the mail records in the zone editor for aws, or since the dns is propgated to the plesk instance it will do it all by itself