Guest links, spaces and link settings

Preview without an account

Enter a domain and a server IP on the home page and you get a working preview link straight away. Guest links have a few limits:

• They always expire after 7 days.
• One active guest link per IP address, and at most 5 new guest links per IP address per hour.
• No password, no space and no QA report until the link is saved to an account.

Click Create free account under the result. After you sign up in the same browser, the link is saved to your workspace and follows your plan’s rules from then on.

Switch, protect and expire links

Each link on the Links page has an on/off switch and a settings panel:

• On/off: a disabled link stops working at once and shows visitors that it was disabled.
• Password: visitors must enter it before they see the site. Every plan.
• Expiry: links on the Free plan expire 7 days after their last visit, and at most 30 days after they are created (see How long Free links last); paid plans can keep links without an expiry.
• Visitor notice: see The visitor notice.
• SSL mode: see SSL modes.
• Old site for comparison: the domain, and optionally the IP, the site had on the old server, for when the domain changed with the migration. Live and visual compares open the old side there. See The domain changed during the migration.

How long Free links last

A link on the Free plan starts with 7 days. Every time someone opens a page of the preview, it gets 7 days from that visit again, up to 30 days after the link was created. A preview your client keeps checking stays alive for the whole migration; a link nobody opens ends after a week.

• Only page views count: images, scripts and other files, the visitor notice, and live compare do not extend a link. Visits are recorded within a few minutes.
• If you set an earlier expiry yourself, the link keeps it: visits never push it past the date you chose.
• An expired link stays expired; create a new one or extend it on a paid plan.
• Guest links always expire 7 days after they are created. Paid plans can keep links without an expiry.

You get the usual reminders 3 days and 1 day before a link expires, based on its current expiry date.

The visitor notice

Before the first page of a preview, visitors see a short DNSPeek page: “Preview of example.com on a new server. Created with DNSPeek. This is not the official site address. Only continue if you were expecting this link.” Continue opens the preview and the notice does not come back on that browser for 30 days. The notice also has a Report abuse link.

It protects your visitors from look-alike links: a preview looks exactly like the real site, so it tells them where they really are. Only page loads in the browser are interrupted; images, files, WebSockets, QA reports, visual compares and live compare are not affected. Search engines never index previews either way.

• Guest links and links on the Free plan always show it.
• On paid plans it is on by default, and you can turn it off per link in the link settings with Show the visitor notice. Turning it back on is always possible.

Need to change many links at once? Select them and use the bulk actions, or create them from a file. See Bulk actions and CSV import.

Reporting abuse of a preview

Anyone who opens a preview can report it: the visitor notice and every shared report have a Report abuse link that opens the abuse form for that page. No account is needed. The reporter picks a reason (phishing, malware, copyright or other), describes what they saw and can add an email to hear back. Reports can also be emailed to support with the preview URL.

What happens next: the DNSPeek team reviews the report. If the preview breaks the Acceptable Use Policy, the link can be disabled, and in serious cases the account is suspended. Where it is lawful and safe, the workspace owner is told what was done and why. Links flagged by Google Safe Browsing are disabled automatically. A preview only forwards visitors to a server chosen by its owner; DNSPeek does not host the site itself. Never send malware samples; a link and a description are enough.

Private links

In a team workspace every member sees every link. Turn on Private — only you can see this link when you create a link, or later in its settings, to keep it to yourself:

• Nobody else in the workspace sees a private link: not other members, not admins, not the owner. It is left out of their Links page, search, counts and notifications, and opening it by address shows “not found”. The same goes for its QA reports, visual compares, comments and readiness reports.
• The preview URL still works for anyone you send it to. Private is about who sees the link in the dashboard and the API, not about who can open the preview. Use a password to protect the preview itself.
• Only you can switch a link between private and shared. A lock badge marks your private links, and the All links / Shared with team / Private filter on the Links page shows them on their own.
• If you leave the workspace, are removed or delete your account, your private links become shared links (handed to the owner when there is one), so a private link is never left where nobody can see it.
• Private links still count towards the workspace’s usage. The activity log records what happened to them as Private link, without their address or domain (see Private links in the activity log).
• API keys see the shared links plus the private links of the person who created the key.

The switch appears once someone else is in the workspace (a member or a pending invitation).

What happens when you make a link private

While a link was shared, teammates may have sent it to clients or connected it to their tools. When you save the switch to private, DNSPeek undoes that so nothing keeps pointing at it (the link settings list what will be reset before you save):

• The share links of its QA reports stop working and each report gets a new one: open the report and click Copy share link to share it again. Live compare share links and readiness report links are revoked; create new ones if you still want to share. Anyone opening an old link sees “not found”.
• Notification channel rules set up for this link are removed, and a private link can't be added to a team channel rule. Its events go to you only.
• The link's DNS propagation webhook is removed, because DNSPeek can't tell who added it. Tracking keeps running, and you get a DNS webhook removed notice in your inbox; add the webhook again in the link's DNS tracking settings if it was yours.
• Past activity log entries about the link lose its address and domain, show as Private link and can no longer be looked up by the link's ID. Owners and admins still see that a private link had activity, and when, but not which link. This can't be undone.
• You can list and revoke the live compare share links of your private link yourself, whatever your role, and create new ones unless your role is read-only.
• Notifications and emails sent before the switch are not recalled, and the preview URL keeps working for anyone who has it.

Switching back to shared does not bring the old share links back or restore the activity log entries.

To cut off a single QA report's share link at any time, open the report and click Reset share link (see Reset the share link). The old link stops working straight away and Copy share link gives you the new one. Whoever ran the report, the link's creator, and workspace owners and admins can reset it; viewers can't.

Spaces

A space is a folder for preview links, usually one per client, site or migration project. Spaces only organise links in the dashboard: a link works the same way, at the same preview URL, whichever space it is in.

Spaces belong to the workspace, so everyone in a team sees the same spaces. Members can create spaces, rename any space and delete the spaces they created; admins and the owner can delete any space. Viewers can only look.

Create a space

Click New space under Links in the sidebar, or open Manage spaces and click Create new space, then give it a name, such as the client's company or the site's domain. You can rename it at any time.

Open a space

Click a space in the sidebar, on the Manage spaces page or in a link's space badge to see only its links; the address of that view can be bookmarked or shared with your team. Each space shows how many links it has and how many of them are active (switched on and not expired). Search and the other filters of the Links page work inside a space too.

Counts only include links you can see: another member's private links are not counted.

Put links in a space

• New link: pick the space when you create the link.
• One link: open the link's ⋯ menu and choose Move to space…, or pick the space in the link's settings.
• Many links: select them on the Links page and use the bulk Move action (see Bulk actions and CSV import).

Moving a link to another space, or out of every space, does not change the link or its preview URL. Moves are recorded in the activity log.

Unsorted

Links that are in no space are listed under Unsorted. New links land there unless you pick a space. To take a link out of a space, move it to Unsorted.

Delete a space

Deleting a space keeps its links: they move to Unsorted and keep working. Only the space itself is removed.

Preview addresses

Every link gets its own subdomain on a separate preview domain, so the previewed site never shares cookies or storage with the DNSPeek dashboard. Pick your own alias under Advanced options when you create a link (3–50 lowercase letters, digits or dashes); otherwise one is generated for you.

Preview links are never indexed by search engines: every preview response carries X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow.