About this site

Who writes it

I'm Julian Mullins. I've worked with databases since 1988 and with Unix since 1990, and my first client website went live in 1996. I still manage it. Most of my work is the hosting, domains and mail underneath other people's websites, and a good deal of it starts with somebody telling me their website has stopped.

These guides are the explanations I give on those days, written down so that you can have them without waiting for me.

Who runs it

The site is run by Dalaric Limited, my company, registered in England and Wales, company number 06995683. Registered office: 4 South Terrace, South Street, Dorchester, Dorset DT1 1DE.

What it is for

Two things, and I'd rather say both. The guides are meant to be useful on their own, to somebody who never contacts me. And each one ends by saying what I do about that problem, because some readers would rather it was somebody else's job, and it's how people find me.

The domain check

The check on the front page reads only what anybody on the internet can already see. For the domain you type, it asks:

• Cloudflare's public DNS resolver for the domain's nameservers, website addresses, mail records, SPF record and DMARC record, and for the usual DKIM record if your mail is with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
• The registry for the domain's ending, through its public lookup service, for the registrar, the expiry date and the domain's status.
• The regional internet registry for who holds the website's server address.
• The website itself for its home page, over https and http, with and without www. Only the status and headers are used, and the page itself is never read or kept.

It keeps nothing, and it is limited to a few checks a minute from any one network address. It is a snapshot, so a change you have just made can take a while to show.

The bounce explainer and the SPF merger

The bounce explainer reads the text you paste and nothing else. It asks nobody anything: the codes and wording are matched against a list kept in the site itself.

The SPF merger works the same way on the records you paste. If you ask it to start from your domain's current records, it asks Cloudflare's public DNS resolver for them, and that lookup counts towards the same limit as the domain check.

Both send what you paste in the body of the request rather than in the page address, so it doesn't end up in request logs, and neither keeps it.

What it doesn't do

• No affiliate links. Nobody pays for a mention, and no link on this site earns anything when you click it.
• No account and no newsletter. There is nothing to sign up for.
• No cookies and no tracking. The privacy page says exactly what happens when you visit.
• No prices. If you want to know what something costs, ask, and you'll get an answer for your situation rather than a table.

If something here is wrong

Hosting changes, and a guide that was right last year can be wrong now. If you spot something, write to info@dalaric.com. Corrections are welcome and so are questions the guides don't answer yet.

A word of caution

The guides are general. Your hosting may be set up differently, and some of the steps, such as changing DNS records or restoring a backup, can make things worse if they are done to the wrong thing. If you are unsure, stop and ask whoever provides the service, or ask me.