Why is my domain forwarding to the wrong storefront?

Store Design
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1

Hi, I am helping my friend set up his site and he wanted to forward a domain (which is third party owned - whois.com). Anyway, to test it I set up a shopify account for myself and used the domain forwarding. Yup, you can guess what happened…the URL now forwards to my (now) defunct page, while his is the address listed on the domain forwarding of my host. So what’s the thought process here.

  1. It’s a Shopify issue?

  2. It’s a Whois issue?

  3. It’s my friends issue and the best option is for him to start over with a new site…note he hasn’t launched his store yet. I can redirect to the new site.

2

Hi, @RoadWarrior2023

Greetings, and thanks for posting!

I understand you’re having an issue with domain forwarding. I do apologize, but I am a bit confused by the issue. I see you mentioned that the domain is hosted outside of Shopify via a third party platform, and you forwarded the domain to your store. This seems to be expected behaviour as the domain was forwarded to your store, and not your friend’s store.

To forward it to your friend’s store you would simply need to delete it from your domains list within your store, and add the domain to your friend’s Shopify account. Since it sounds like you have already pointed the domain to Shopify, there is nothing additional to do within the domain’s DNS settings.

I hope that makes sense! If that isn’t the issue you’re running into please provide more context and I’d be happy to help!

3

To your paragraphs, yes, this is the expected result to happen and it did. However, instead of doing the second paragraph last night, I deleted my store, and as such no longer have access to it. But it’s still in the shopify system.
I just went back to my store and it tells me I have to now select a plan to move ahead. So I selected a plan, got in there, then checked there was no domain active, and deactivated the store. See the screenshot at https://imgur.com/a/KqhxVV3

4

Would having my friend start a new site and choosing the domain and then migrating everything from their old store to the new one be the quickest decision by now? They want to launch on Dec 1. Everything else is ready to go.

5

Thanks for that context! That helps a lot.

The easiest option is to open your old store where the domain was attached, and reattach it. Once you do this, you can delete it once more.

Once the domain is deleted again, you should be able to add the domain to your friends store without issue.

If there is an issue, you can reach out to our team via Live Chat and as long as you can authenticate yourself for the store that the domain is attached to, they can assist you with removing it.