Complex DNS records ecommerce site old to new site different hosts

I have a unique problem that I’ve never encountered before. Client currently has an ecommerce site with host A where Nameservers point. That site is built on a windows server with proprietary code and a fairly uncooperative developer.

We enter and have built a new ecommerce site with Wordpress & WooCommerce. That is on host B and is Linux VPS. Currently we are using the temporary IP-based URL. We managed to purchase a Comodo Wildcard SSL, but I cannot test the site for payment gateway & shipping as I cannot get the SSL to work without a real domain.

The domain name must remain the same.

We have access to change the Nameservers. And if I knew exactly what to ask for, I might be able to get the developer of the old site who has control over DNS to set up something…

We cannot allow the old site to go down (has it’s own SSL certificate) until we’re ready to throw the switch, but we cannot do that till we can test and get certified. It’s a conundrum and makes my head hurt.

Two scenarios:

  1. we switch Nameservers to go to host B and then remap DNS records for the A record and MX to point to the IP of Host A

  2. I compel the developer to set up a CNAME / A Record & subdomain called test:.domain.com to point to the dedicated IP at Host B.

Would either of those enable me to prevent breaking the original site and getting the SSL certificate to work enough to test what we’re pretty confident about and get our payment gateway certified?

Sorry for the long post, but I’m desperate. We’re supposed to have testing enabled no later than Wednesday 4/22/15.

Thanks in advance.

Have the new host also listen to the current domain. Don’t worry, this will do nothing for your live environment because no DNS in the world is pointing to it.

When it’s listening to that domain, install the SSL certificate, and then put the domain name in the hosts file with the IP of the new server. Then when you browse to the site you will get it from the new server with the new certificate.

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