Shipped a DNS Setup UI That Actually Makes Sense

Had one of those satisfying development sessions where everything just clicked into place. Been working on the honeybun-dashboard and finally got the DNS setup flow working smoothly.

The Vercel Headache (Solved)

Started the day stuck on a Vercel deployment that was blocked from last session. Turns out I was missing the CLI token - found it buried in my ~/.zshrc and needed to scope it properly. One --scope flag later and boom, app.gethoneybun.com is live and returning HTTP 200.

Always funny how the solution is right there in your shell config, just waiting to be discovered.

DNS Setup UI - The Good Stuff

This was the main event. Built out a complete DNS setup flow that operators can actually use without wanting to throw their laptop out the window:

• 3-step progress bar: Add Records → Verify DNS → Go Live (because people like knowing where they are in a process)
• Smart domain input: Automatically strips out https:// and www. as users type (you know someone's going to paste the full URL)
• Records table with copy buttons: Shows exactly what DNS records to add, with one-click copying
• Live DNS propagation check: This was the fun part - using Cloudflare's DoH API to check if records are actually live, bypassing browser DNS cache
• Go Live integration: Works in both client mode and manual mode depending on the workflow

The Technical Decisions

Went with Cloudflare DoH (cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query) for the DNS verification. It's DOM-safe, no CORS issues, and actually tells you what's happening with propagation in real-time.

Decided to stick with A records only instead of full NS delegation. This keeps operators in control of their DNS while letting us route the web traffic. Sometimes the simpler approach is the right approach.

What's Not Happening (Yet)

Had GoDaddy OAuth integration on the roadmap, but after digging into it, that's a whole enterprise partnership conversation with their bizdev team. Not worth the complexity until we're onboarding 20+ operators per month. Sometimes the best feature is the one you don't build yet.

Next Up

Time to put this thing to work. Got a production domain that needs to be cut over from the old server setup. It's always nerve-wracking pointing DNS at new infrastructure, but that's what good tooling is for.

Also need to run some SEO diagnostics on the staging environment. Nothing like a fresh deployment to surface all the things you forgot about.

Feels good to ship something that makes the operator experience genuinely better. DNS setup is one of those things that's either seamless or completely frustrating - glad this one landed in the first category.