Dan.com - Problem with landing pages

[Kostas]

I have my portfolio at Dan.com and today I noticed that landing pages do not work properly.

The problem is apparent the first time you visit a new domain. It just won't load.

I have tried this over several iphones, browser safari and brave, different IPs (Greece)
The same happens on Mac but not on Windows or Android from my tests.

After 2-3 tries of waiting 5-10seconds, the domain will load and after that it continuous to load without problem for several minutes.

To demonstrate, pick any domain from your dan portfolio that you haven't visited recently (within the day) and try to load it on an iphone. I hope it works for you and the problem is only local. I have contacted Dan and they will investigate.

I understand this is very weird but it is what's happening, most probably a problem with the SSL certificates (the message I get on some browsers is "can not establish a secure connection"). Why it works after you try 2-3 times to visit the domain I don't know.

 

[DAN.COM]

Good evening everyone,
First of all, thank you for sharing your experiences. We've worked to identify the issue, which originated with our back-end rules. This has been resolved today, and we're continuing to monitor things very closely.

Best regards,
Dan.com

 

[Kostas]

I’m sharing the complete chat from yesterday. They don’t want to acknowledge there is a problem. Everything is fine on their side.

 

[Acroplex]

@DAN.COM - When attempting a secure connection, via the command:

openssl s_client -servername domain.com -connect 3.64.163.50:443 < /dev/null | openssl x509 -text

this error comes up:

error:0909006C:PEM routines:get_name:no start line:crypto/pem/pem_lib.c:745:Expecting: TRUSTED CERTIFICATE

There are plenty of resources on the "error:0909006C" part you might want to consult.

 

[Mister Funsky]

Dan/Afternic/Godaddy are almost completely silent about it here an where it is posted about in official thread(s).

My assumption why they are not jumping on fixing this problem is they are working on integration...it simply isn't important to them.

In the domain world, one decent sale can carry a portfolio for months...the potential to lose a sale/lead due to 12 second or more load time is unacceptable.

Looks like I've got to point names elsewhere and wait for things to settle out (if they do). It will be a colossal error if they let Dan die...best platform for name selling that has been developed in a decade.

 

[Acroplex]

Kosta, I agree with you that the issue is real and that the response in underwhelming. I've identified a similar issue that affects new domain registrations when also added to Dan.com; the "cookie" buttons become unclickable on landers until about 60 minutes pass. This points to an issue with the TTL (time to live) values in the Dan settings.

 

[Kostas]

Where is this setting? Is it called "Host your for sale pages on Dan.com" or something else? (thanks!)

That’s it yes

 

[Acroplex]

I'm sure this is a temporary (302) redirect that doesn't affect any ranking but it's not a great solution either.

I'm testing the following approach:

1. Use my own hosting & DNS for a group of domains for sale
2. Link an image or text etc. to the Dan internal page
3. Internal lander is make offer or request price only (because if it has a BIN that it's clicked on GoDanny wants you to pay 25%)

 

[Acroplex]

Thanks for chiming in, @DAN.COM - the platform, from an end-user perspective, is not running normally.

Everyone's experience seem to carry the same symptoms and it's not dependent on the particular OS, browser, or internet provider.

 

[Acroplex]

I have experienced this intermittent issue as well. The reason it works eventually past the first failed attempt is because the DNS gets cached. Also, keep in mind some antivirus software such as Avast may interfere with page loading. The issue appears to happen more often in Firefox vs. Chrome.

 

[Dane]

I have experienced this intermittent issue as well. The reason it works eventually past the first failed attempt is because the DNS gets cached. Also, keep in mind some antivirus software such as Avast may interfere with page loading. The issue appears to happen more often in Firefox vs. Chrome.

This is no joke. I just tested a name and it just spun for the longest time (with a blank white page), then eventually showed an error message, then eventually showed the correct landing page. There's no way anyone will wait that long, they'll be long gone before the page appears. Doesn't @Dan and/or @GoDaddy care about this issue?

Edit - I just tried a bunch more names and it's happening to almost every name I test. First a blank page (for a long while) then an error message (also for a long while) then the landing page. Here's the error message that gets displayed:

This site can’t be reached

xxxxx.com took too long to respond.

Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
Running Connectivity Diagnostics
ERR_TIMED_OUT

 

[Dane]

My assumption why they are not jumping on fixing this problem is they are working on integration...it simply isn't important to them.

My thoughts exactly. They want everyone to move from Dan to Afternic. They bought Dan to shut down the competition and to take their technology. Once the technology is copied it would be redundant (aka: not cost effective) to keep both services running.

In the domain world, one decent sale can carry a portfolio for months...the potential to lose a sale/lead due to 12 second or more load time is unacceptable.

Bingo.

Looks like I've got to point names elsewhere...

But where ??

 

[Dane]

I will likely move names back to PCrew and Bodis and handle the leads myself.

This idea is starting to look more and more attractive to me. I also handled the leads myself before Afternic. Back to the good 'ol days, I guess.

 

[Acroplex]

Has anyone heard back from Dan?

The issue is widespread. Go to https://gtmetrix.com and enter your domain with & without https and share the results here.

I get mostly this error:

 

[Mister Funsky]

Has anyone heard back from Dan?

I've heard nothing other than the response to me in this multi-person post:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/dan-com-domain-marketplace-official-thread.1148567/post-9114469

 

[Acroplex]

At least half the page visits end with an unresponsive server, or an error generated by failed http/https requests. This is widespread and independent of network. Checked over wifi/ISP and on wireless and the results are the same.

 

[rh2000]

I was thinking about parking all my domains at Dan but after reading all these complaints, I will have to think of another parking provider.

 

[Acroplex]

Thanks Kosta. It seems their network is dropping packets/connections. There's no way this is normal.

 

[Webmail]

I am running into the same issue as everyone else with my Dan domains.

On the initial page load nothing loads but when you refresh the page it loads normal the second time.

I'm not sure if it's a firewall or cache issue but it seems to be happening across all my domains on Dan.com

Location: California
Browser: Chrome / Firefox
My DNS provider: Cloudflare

 

[Acroplex]

I believe @DAN.COM has eliminated the issue without being specific as to what it took to fix it.

At a minimum, SSL requests don't seem to get blocked and they don't return errors. Keep your fingers crossed!

 

[branding]

I can confirm that each "first" visit on https produces delays and errors. That's DAN's problem. It seems like a certificate is instantly created, or otherwise not immediately available. Once it has been created/made available, the TLS problems disappear. To test this, you certainly have to pick a different domain every single time...

(@DomainNature's domain below)

$ openssl s_client -servername altetra.com -connect 3.64.163.50:443 < /dev/null | openssl x509 -text

Spot on... They're using (used to use) on demand SSL creation... Like I do... But I do it better

 

[ArielT]

Use page speed testing tools

I've just checked some of my domains and they have to improve

Also tested an SquadHelp landing page and they perform much better

 

[Kostas]

I just received a reply from Dan on this and it is very underwhelming. Pasting it below:

Our team has reviewed this and confirmed there is nothing that is causing this delay on our end. They have shared two possible reasons with me, to see if you can resolve this on your end:

• DNS Resolution: The user's DNS server might be slow or having trouble resolving the domain names. This can cause a delay in loading the pages.
• Browser Cache/ Cookies: If the user's browser cache or cookies are full, or if there's an issue with them, it can cause pages to load slowly or not at all.

 

[Dane]

I just received a reply from Dan on this and it is very underwhelming. Pasting it below:

Our team has reviewed this and confirmed there is nothing that is causing this delay on our end. They have shared two possible reasons with me, to see if you can resolve this on your end:

• DNS Resolution: The user's DNS server might be slow or having trouble resolving the domain names. This can cause a delay in loading the pages.
• Browser Cache/ Cookies: If the user's browser cache or cookies are full, or if there's an issue with them, it can cause pages to load slowly or not at all.

So all of us suddenly have these exact same issues, all at the same time? I don't think so.

 

[Kostas]

For now I have switched from the dedicated landing pages to redirecting to Dan’s internal for sale pages. But I have to say I really don’t like their response on this and will be on the lookout for better solutions from other providers going forward.

To me it seems @Acroplex is more competent than their whole dev team in identifying the reasons behind this issue as a further response from support confirmed they’ve read this thread before replying to me.