Well, I was writing a zine about DNS. And at the end of many of my zines, I say "the best way to learn is to experiment! Do weird DNS experiments and see how it works". But I realized that most people, even if they have a domain, probably aren't comfortable doing weird DNS experiments on a domain that's important to them.
So I figured I'd create a domain that's just for playing around
(messwithdns.com) and let anyone set DNS records on it.
You're very encouraged to play around and break things.
I'd love to hear about it! You can report issues with the site on GitHub.
The .net version is for serving the website, the
.com version is where you're allowed to set DNS records.
They're separate because it makes the site faster, more secure, and
more reliable (I can use a "real" DNS server for messwithdns.net).
Technically the API does allow setting any DNS record type you want, but I've only built the UI for a few types. In particular I haven't set up DNSSEC yet so there's no UI for setting DNSSEC records.
No, you can only get a randomly generated subdomain, like banana17.messwithdns.com.
No, your DNS records get deleted after a week. This is to save disk space and to discourage anyone from relying on this for anything real. It's just for learning.
This project was built by Julia Evans and Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan.