I decided to host my blog at Tumblr, using their custom domain setup (http://blog.smokingfishgames.com/ instead of http://smokingfishgames.tumblr.com). However, it's been 72 hours and I'm still getting spotty redirection.
It works some of the time--I go and see the page and blog, and it's all fine. However, it occasionally just stops working and redirects back to my web host, which is a directory with nothing but a single file called BUGGER.html (which I stuck in to make sure that it was my web host and not some Tumblr empty directory).
Clearing the Chrome DNS cache makes the problem go away--for a while. After a few minutes, or an hour, or however long, I'll start seeing BUGGER.html again. I clear the cache, and poof, the blog shows up.
The thing that's curious to me is that when I clear the cache and get BUGGER.html again (which happens occasionally), I can look at my Chrome DNS cache and see
assets.tumblr.com UNSPECIFIED
blog.smokingfishgames.com UNSPECIFIED
www.tumblr.com UNSPECIFIED
IP addresses and expiration times omitted for brevity's sake--if they're important I'm sure I can replicate the issue.
This implies, to me anyway, that my browser is reaching Tumblr but getting bounced back to my web host. Any reason why this would be happening, or is this a normal symptom of DNS propagation? If it is a problem, should I be bothering Tumblr or my host with it, or is this something I can fix myself?
A 82.197.131.96 3600 CNAME domains.tumblr.com 3600 MX blog.smokingfishgames.com 3600 10and Tumblr hasblog.smokingfishgames.complugged in. When I click 'test your domain' it says that my domain 'is pointing to Tumblr!', very cheerfully. – Manic Apr 9 '13 at 6:54