Tales of a Chef Workflow: Keeping a tidy server
How we migrate and cleanup resources in our Chef cookbooks to maintain servers
Debugging DNS
In this post we share some tips and tools you can use to troubleshoot DNS issues on your own like a pro.
Writing open-source Chef cookbooks (part I)
Our experience while rewriting PowerDNS cookbook using custom resources to write composable, easy to extend community cookbooks.
Getting on stage – the definitive guide
The last post about speaking at conferences is about all the little and not so little details about giving a presentation in front of others.
The Silver Searcher, a better UNIX search tool
I've been using grep and find for 11 years as a systems admin, I'm writing this post to change these tools for a new faster, easier to use one: ag.
The Power of the Pull Request
This is the story of how I used pull requests, a powerful tool for contribution, to submit a DNSimple adapter to the dnscontrol project.
When and how to use animations in slides
Animations when used correctly can dramatically improve your talk but when misused they make watching your slides cumbersome.
8 domain management tips for everyone
Simple tips and good practices to make sure that you have a healthy domain management system.
The Importance of WHOIS
Everyone has it but not everyone thinks about their WHOIS info. Read on to learn about the importance of WHOIS.
Create beautiful slide decks
A handy guide to create stunning slides empowering a great presentation to a (not only) technical audience.
The Value of Exit Surveys
Learning our weaknesses and our strengths, in the eyes of our customers, from our exit survey.
Conferences: the ultimate team building event?
Attending a conference as a team turn out to be game changer.
Aligning Projects with Business Goals
Even with a small team it's easy to lose sight of the strategic goals of your business. Read on to how we are attempting to align project development with business goals at DNSimple.
The Not-Your-Job Jobs of DNSimple
Making Standard Operating Procedures Great Again.
Limiting the risks of SSL certificate mis-issuance
Learn about the most common techniques to protect against certificate mis-issuance and limit the impact of forged SSL certificates.
Learning to Fail Fast at DNSimple
We are reminded to fail fast and avoid the sunk cost fallacy in operations.
How we organized our presence at CodeMash 2017
My reflections on the preparation for CodeMash and how the conference unfolded for the DNSimple team.
Taking a vacation from writing code to write more code
The code-cation or how I learned to stop worrying and learn Golang.
Secondhand Knowledge
Ask questions, listen to the answers, and study the trade-offs.
Crafting a Peer Review Process for a Distributed Team
Knowing how one is performing on a distributed team is hard. Here's how we've tried to address it.
The idiomatic challenges of working for an English spoken, American company
Tales of a Spaniard evolving in an English environment
How we organize our team meeting
Loin des yeux loin du coeur, what team retreats mean for our distributed team.
Snapping a Polaroid Picture of Our Marketing Efforts
How do you get your whole team to achieve a shared vision for marketing? This is the story about how we ran through some exercises using the book Traction as the basis.
Redundancies in your domain name services
Talking about the redundancies in DNS and what you can do to help uptime of your services
Announcing DNStudy
A place where we share our favorite learning resources.
Understanding ICANN Accreditation
We went through the process of accreditation with ICANN some time ago. Here's what it does and why we did it.
The Bullet Journal: when reliability and practicality outweigh technology
Sometimes, even the thousand year old legacy tool is still the best tool.
Lessons learned from growing a small business
Throughout the years I've watched as DNSimple has grown to the team we are now, and along the way I've observed what works and what doesn't. In this post I'll share 6 lessons I've learned while the company has grown.
The Three R's of Domain Names
Every domain name registration involves at least three entities: a registrant, a registrar, and a registry. We'll look at them each in this post.
The cavernous caveats of a digital nomad on the vanlife
Once you nail the basics, you're golden.
On remote working and finding a co-working space
Working remotely can mean spending a lot of time alone, a co-working space can help you alleviate feelings of loneliness and brings additional benefits.
The story of How DNS works
Everything you wanted to know about How DNS works (the comic) and never dared to ask.
Redirects with HTTPS
Understanding how to properly configure redirects with HTTP and HTTPS sites.
Our open source Chef cookbooks
We develop and maintain a few open source Chef cookbooks, this post talks about them.
The journey of DNSimple's first apprentice
One man armed with little experience and a bandolier of questions takes on DNS. And ghosts.
Workflows in the wild – how we reinvented our onboarding emails using Drip workflows
Move over Walkman, there's a new cool kid in town.
Using multiple accounts to segment the business
One possible use of the DNSimple multiple account feature is to segment your domains into different accounts depending on the level of service.
OMG Thursday (aka Documentation Day)
The results of the first DNSimple documentation day, codename OMG Thursday.
WTF Thursday (aka Bug Squashing Day)
The results of the first DNSimple bug squashing day, codename WTF Thurdsay.
Common DNS records and their uses
We've looked at resource records in general. Today let's investigate the various types of DNS records.
Why and How to Use Google's Public DNS
We occasionally recommend people switch to using Google's public DNS resolvers. Here are some of the reasons why and how you can make that change.
Scaling UIs
How we reorganized the footer to make it more useful.
The benefits and drawbacks of keeping domain registration and DNS together
People often wonder if they should separate their registrar from their DNS provider. We're taking a look at both sides so you can make up your mind for your domains.
What's in a DNS response?
DNS queries and responses fly across the internet all day, but we don't often take a look at what's inside of them. Today we do.
The benefits of using a managed DNS provider
Running a DNS server might not be too hard, but it's usually best not to go alone when maintaining an entire DNS infrastructure. Here's some of the reasons we think managed DNS is a great idea.
Top DNS Lookup Tools
Problems with DNS configuration come up all the time. Knowing about the tools to resolve them can really get you out of a bind.
How we support our customers at DNSimple
Quality customer support is an important cornerstone of how we do business at DNSimple. In this blog post I'll show you how we do it, what tools we use, and what kinds of challenges we face.
The Top DNS Servers And What They Offer
There are a lot of DNS Servers out there. We're looking at some of the top ones here and comparing their features and why some are chosen
Technical challenges behind the Secondary DNS
An overview of the technical challenges behind the implementation of the Secondary DNS server support.
New series of educational posts
We're starting a new series of educational posts here starting next month, along with a newsletter.
Supporting GitHub Student Developer Pack and Global Day of Code Retreat
We believe in the power of education and practice, and we believe in putting our money where it can make a difference. Read on to find out more...
Don't Lose Business - Transfer Your Domain Names Without Downtime
Transferring a domain name from one registrar to another is often complicated and mistakes can cause you downtime and result in lost business. Don't let that happen with our new guide.
How CodeShip.io Continuously Deploys DNS Records
Benjamin Fritsch of CodeShip.io shows how they use the DNSimple API with GitHub to continously deploy their DNS zones as changes are made.
DevOps and Chef at DNSimple
Learn about how DNSimple manages changes to over 50 servers across 5 data centers around the world with a team of 5 developers.
Troy Hunt on Moving to DNSimple
Troy Hunt has captured the essence of why we made DNSimple in a pictorial blog post on why he moved to DNSimple.
Let's Talk About Security
Security is all about tradeoffs. The story of how Naoki Hiroshima's Twitter handle was stolen from him should cause us all to stop and take some time to think about security.
Understanding IO Renewal Policies
IO domains do not follow the same renewal procedures as normal TLDs like com, net and org. IO domains must have auto-renewal enabled to be renewed.
Ignite Talk from 2011: Everything You Need to Know About DNS in Five Minutes
Last year I gave a talk at Ignite Boulder titled: "DNS in 5 Minutes". I've been remiss in not sharing this, so here you go.
Things to Know About Transferring a Domain
Here are a couple of things that you should know about before transferring a domain.
GoDaddy, SOPA and You
We at DNSimple oppose SOPA and any attempt by the US government to try to rule the Internet. DNSimple vehemently opposes any attempts to censor the Internet or to provide the facilities to do so.
DNS Simplified: SPF Records
SPF stands for Sender Profile Framework. DNSimple provides an easy interface for creating SPF records so you don't have to manage those records on your own.
Preparing Domains in GoDaddy for Transfer Out
If you have more than a few domains with GoDaddy then preparing them for transferring away can be a time-consuming process. To help, we've put together this guide.
DNS Simplified: MX Records
MX stands for Mail eXchange. MX Records tell email delivery agents where they should deliver your email. You can have many MX records for a domain, providing a way to have redundancy and ensure that email will always be delivered.
DNS Simplified: CNAME Records
CNAME stands for Canonical Name. CNAME records can be used to alias one name to another. For example, if you have a server where you keep all of your documents online, it might normally be accessed through docs.example.com. You may also want to access it through documents.example.com. One way to make this possible is to add a CNAME record that points documents.example.com to docs.example.com. When someone visits documents.example.com they will see the exact same content as docs.example.com.
DNS Simplified: A Records
Today I’m starting a new series of regular blog posts called “DNS Simplified”. In these post it is my goal to describe DNS and domain name concepts so they are easy for anyone to understand.
