DirectDNS.net - Preview Your Website Without Updating DNS

Advin · December 24

Hi everyone,

I launched a new personal project, directdns.net.

The idea behind this is simple.

Imagine you have a public web server running on the IP address 45.8.22.46, but you’ve configured a specific setup for example.com that isn’t yet pointed to this IP address.

Using DirectDNS, you can input the IP address (45.8.22.46) and the hostname (example.cpm). DirectDNS then generates a reverse proxy that makes the server behave as if example.com were already pointed to it. This allows you to preview and test your website as if it’s fully live under the desired hostname, even before DNS changes are made.

This is particularly useful for demonstrating or troubleshooting websites prior to updating DNS records. It works similarly to services like skipdns.link. In addition, if you wish, you don't have to specify an IP address at all if you just want to access your site without cache.

The application is based in Rust in the backend, and React in the frontend. I'm still learning Rust (it's actually my first time using the language), so there could be some issues that I haven't ironed out yet. I'll open source the project soon once I'm more happier with the code and once I'm more familiarized with Rust.

I also plan on making a free cPanel plugin at some point.

At the moment, links are cleared and will need to be regenerated every so often. Since the project is still in alpha, I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy with the database design, and thus I don't want to have to deal with migrating data to new schemas. Once I'm more closer to finished, I'll eventually have settings for how long the URL should be active.

The API is completely public and unlimited. You just need to send a POST request to /api/create with the hostname and optionally the IP address. It will return a full_url that you can use. I will likely switch away from making reverse proxies on the directdns.net domain, so if you plan on building something with the API, make sure to use the full_url value that's returned.

This is not an Advin Servers project, this is my own project.

If you have any feature requests or recommendations, just let me know! This will always be free.

Enjoy!