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I've recently set up a website with a smaller hosting company. The plan has a dedicated IP. They sent me emails to say it's all set up, but now their support channels are all unresponsive even though they say it's open 24 hours.

In the File Manager in the cpanel I've put an index.html file in the public_html directory. But when I point my browser to the IP address given to me, it comes up with the cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi page.

What is the problem?

I haven't set the name-servers for my domain yet, but that shouldn't be a problem because I am using the IP address in the browser.

Note: I don't think I have access to ssh.

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  • [Serverfault][1] [1]: serverfault.com/questions/178427/… check these thread if it helps you.
    – Jigar Tank
    Mar 17, 2012 at 9:09
  • The etc folder in my cpanel is empty.
    – CJ7
    Mar 17, 2012 at 9:12
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    then i think your plan with the comapny isnt't dedicated or VPS.
    – Jigar Tank
    Mar 17, 2012 at 9:16
  • They gave me an IP address.
    – CJ7
    Mar 17, 2012 at 10:13
  • I have a shared hosting service and found that the IP address shown is CPanel may not be reliable - I found that my actual site IP address was different. If your hosting service is not the place where you bought your domain (the registrar), you will need to check what IP address you are pointing your domain to in the DNS Administration at the registrar (ie not the hosting service) is the correct one. YOu can test this by simply copy-pasting the IP into the browser address bar. If you see what you expect to see, then this is the correct IP address.
    – T9b
    Apr 24, 2015 at 20:17

4 Answers 4

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It's a bit hard to say for sure, but here's what I guess is going on:

  1. Your website is on name-based shared web hosting. You do not have a dedicated IP.

  2. The IP address they gave you is the address of their shared webserver. You're meant to enter it into the DNS settings for your domain.

  3. Since you're trying to access the server using the IP address directly, the server doesn't know which of the sites hosted on it you want. Thus, it's showing you a generic default page instead.

If you want to test things locally before configuring your DNS, you can add it into the hosts file on your own computer, something like this:

111.22.33.44    yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com

After that, pointing your browser to http://www.yourdomain.com should cause it to request the page from the server at 111.22.33.44, while sending the header Host: www.yourdomain.com to tell the server that it's expecting the content from your domain, rather than from one of the others hosted at that IP.

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  • So how would you configure the DNS then?
    – T9b
    Apr 27, 2015 at 6:55
  • @T9b: If you're running your own nameservers, you would edit their config files. If someone else is hosting your DNS for you (more likely), then you'd typically use their config panel. For more specific instructions, first find out which DNS software / host you're using, and look for its documentation.
    – Ilmari Karonen
    Apr 27, 2015 at 9:46
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Unless you plan to use CGI scripts delete the CGI folder entirely, clear your browser cache or view it using the private browsing mode in your browser. You should see your index.html

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    This worked for me. Firefox had some how created a bad cached redirect (www.mysite.com worked, but mysite.com redirected to the cgi), so I cleared my history just for that domain and now it works fine.
    – row1
    Mar 22, 2015 at 2:55
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try editing the .htaccess file... create a .htaccess file if not exists or add "DirectoryIndex index.php index.html" to the existing .htaccess file. i Hope this should solve the problem.

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Also, what host? And you can't directly 'load' a site as a ip. You have to use your domain as it requests content as 'yourdomain.com' as it searches for 'yourdomain.com's content. When you type the IP in your address in your browser, it requests it as you Internet Service Provider's nameserver. Ex. Bell Canada DSL gives something like this. 'toronto24.dsa.dsl.bell.ca'. Hope this helped.

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    You can load a site via an IP address, provided the site is configured to work like that.
    – paulmorriss
    Oct 8, 2012 at 13:32

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