@Malfa The best and easiest way to prevent the captive browser from being displayed is to enable Parental Controls on the device. This prevents the user from editing their settings, and so they cannot enter the DNS to configure it in the first place.

For the Switch, this can be done in Settings. You don't actually need to block any ESRB content, just having parental controls enabled is enough to block access. A PIN will be prompted for when they go to change the DNS settings.

If you're tech-savvy, blocking all three of our DNS IP addresses at your router's configuration page will also fully block them from resolving DNS requests:

• 45.55.142.122
• 45.55.112.11
• 46.101.65.164

I can also recommend: 1.1.1.1 for families, which can be used to allow or disallow categories of websites, even across other devices on your network. It's a good way to filter all Internet requests without having to set up extra hardware. More info here: https://one.one.one.one/family/

That's normal for forums! The new post 'bumps' it back the top of the Recents list: https://www.quora.com/What-does-bump-mean-in-an-internet-forum

Instead of Facebook, try this:

I got the "Feature is not available" screen with the DNS yesterday on my Switch 2, and can confirm that starting to watch a video (w/o the DNS) in the News applet removed it!

So in total:

1. Set DNS to automatic, or to Google DNS (8.8.8.8)
2. Watch a video in the News app, or open Facebook via the Album share applet
3. Set the DNS back to one of the BrowseDNS addresses

The theory is that that the browser needs to connect "normally" every so often, otherwise it refuses to be displayed. This is likely a security measure to make sure the device is properly up to date before connecting to external websites.

@Yuni check this thread for a potential workaround: https://browsedns.net/topic/16960/hold-up-i-think-i-figured-out-how-to-fix-this-feature-is-unavailable

I actually think this is an interesting idea, because I do think people can be pretty lazy when it comes to reading. But, it was accidentally enabled during the forum rebuild, and was broken anyway, so I've disabled it again. @BrowseGPT is the extent of the AI on the site (Maybe @AntiSpamio too if that counts).

This is only on Switch right? It's strange because your bio doesn't have anything too fancy in it, which is what I might suspect. I'll look into it by this weekend and see if I can replicate or fix the problem.

I can recommend namecheap ( https://www.namecheap.com ), but domains are never going to be free, because there's an annual registrar fee. Before I had a credit card, my first few domain names were given to me as a gift from friends/family.

We have to take user password reset requests seriously, or it would be too easy for someone to pretend to be someone else. I've started a group chat to ask you for some more info and we can go from there.

Alright, let me trying switching to a single static banner ad, it shouldn't be something that slows everything down. Is the laptop a chromebook?

@questionfire You can join the @Hide-BDNS-Ads group to opt-out of viewing the ads. See https://browsedns.net/topic/17139/testing-forum-ads-again for more info

Token had expired, and I've updated and restarted it now. Can you try again?

Restarted with a new model, and it should be working again. Let me know how it compares to the previous model: @BrowseGPT

The question should be how much do I spend to run the forum and DNS! I'd like to get to a point where it brings in more than it costs to run. As right now, I'm spending out of pocket, similarly to how the Homebrew Appstore CDN runs. The @Hide-BDNS-Ads should be enough to handle annoying ad complaints though, while their performance is evaluated.

At some point in the future I can write more specifics about the cash flow for transparency, but we're not there yet. (In other words, "how much do I make from ads?" -> well $0, since there hasn't even been a payout cycle yet). But it'd be nice if the infrastructure here were self-sustaining in the long term.

Sorry, still evaluating how well these perform, if they're worth keeping, whether to tweak or not, etc.

But please feel free to join @Hide-BDNS-Ads ! I won't feel less supported. Also, if anyone does want to directly support me, I have a Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/vgmoose

Ideally either through ads or some other monetization strategy we can find a way to get support for BDNS long term. I don't think whether an individual user turns on adblock or not should make a big difference in that calculation. The forum has a lot of signed-out traffic as well, from external visitors landing here from Google, for instance.

When you use the DNS to browse the Internet, do you primarily do so while the console is docked to a TV, or in handheld mode like a tablet? If you do both, choose the option you do more often.

@Aries Probably the switch is having a javascript error, I can look into it soon. Is it every page of the bio, and does it display any error message?

@maple I've thought about doing something like this, but running your own web mail seems difficult due to spam filters and other modern-day limitations. Let me know if you do pursue it. Some related reading: https://mailtrap.io/blog/email-hosting/

To underscore how difficult it might be, many hosting providers even explicitly block outgoing SMTP ports (25, 465, 587). It might not be possible to have a web client alone circumvent that with existing providers, but it would be interesting.

Maybe it'd be easier to try and get Switch support eg. in ProtonMail, if their web UI is open source, after debugging specifically where it breaks.

I think I found a permission issue, now only mods and the author should see drafts

The BrowseDNS home page has been redesigned to feel more like a modern "new tab" or "home" page. Many more bookmarks have also been added from user feedback.

New URL: https://browsedns.com
(Separate from the forum, which is still browsedns.net)

Preview:

The four main categories are:

• Knowledge (learning resources, like Wikipedia, Wolframalpha, or news sites and gaming guides)
• Entertainment (fan websites, html5 games, and web comics)
• Tools (simple utilities, networking, and email/cloud services)
• Resources (BDNS related links, development resources)

The search engine can be changed with the Pencil icon under the search bar. And all technical info is moved into the header or footer now. Hopefully this makes it easier to use the DNS!