[edit] Also, this service will be abused by spammers and it will then become impossible to use a "redirect.name" URL in email.
I hadn't thought about putting the TXT records on another hostname. That would actually be advantageous for using a CNAME instead of a A record, too.
Can you elaborate on "impossible to use redirect.name URL in email"?
Here's how I understand redirect.name working:
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1. An A/ALIAS/ANAME record for "example.com" points to a redirect.name service (self-hosted or otherwise).
2. The service sees the "example.com" HTTP request via the host header.
3. Service does a DNS lookup for a matching TXT record redirect rule.
4. When found, the service issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect, according to the matching rule.
===
Is this correct?
If so, compare to:
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1. Create an A record for "example.com" that points to my Apache server.
2. Apache detects "example.com" via the host header.
3. Virtual host config for matching domain issues a 301/302 HTTP redirect.
===
Aside from shuffling the redirect config from Apache to DNS, what's the advantage of using redirect.name?
Additionally, every domain name registrar I've used includes a feature called "URL forwarding" that can redirect all HTTP requests for a domain to another. Again, what benefit does redirect.name provide that URL forwarding doesn't?
I'd love to hear the use cases.
This was one of a few ideas we had for bringing this in-house. I've seen other DNS-configured redirection services, but nothing with the flexibility we'd need to offer our customers to match what they're currently getting. I thought I'd do a quick mock-up of the idea and put it out there to get some feedback.
You'd use this service if you were using things like Heroku, which are relying on CNAME records to avoid distributing all the traffic on one IP address that could have the machine it points to shut down at any moment - that's the principle of the cloud.
See: http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/differences-between-a-c... http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com/services/aname-records/
What I'm actually using now and have been using for some time is just a simple TXT record at a subdomain (eg _redirect.example.com). I also have a script which looks for these TXT records in my zones and adds A/AAAA records when needed.
You can check it out as follows:
dig TXT +noall +answer _redirect.infogym.no
dig A +noall +answer infogym.no
dig AAAA +noall +answer infogym.no
curl -Is infogym.no | grep Location