Free domain for minetest servers and projects: minetest.land

[DrFrankenstone]

i.e. free Minetest subdomains: minetest.land is registered for for at least 10 years and pointed to FreeDNS.

This allows anyone running their own Minetest server at home to use a world name, like myworld.minetest.land for their server name, instead of 198.51.147.23, or minetest4.ds2.someisp.ex etc. - and not have the domain expire on you.

Web forwarding is also provided, so Minetest projects, players or websites could to take myproject.minetest.land as a URL. It's even possible to set up email addresses off the subdomains but I don't recommend that.

FreeDNS provide apps so that your home computer is able to keep your chosen domains automatically pointing to your home IP address.

Step by step guide

Future-proofing: If changes are needed to the domain and I can't be contacted, texmex also has admin access.

[Jone]

Thank you very much for setting this up. I am using it now.

[texmex]

That's quite generous, DrFrankenstone. Thanks!

[DrFrankenstone]

Excellent! It didn't sink like a stone :)

and cheers texmex.

I always felt there should be something like this, or that game servers should come with dyndns built in, so it's partly curiosity.

FWIW, 6 subdomains get auto-allocated (in this case to me), so when FreeDNS says there are "8 hosts in use", you know there are 2 domains currently taken by Minetest servers - Jone and someone else.

[ANAND]

DrFrankenstone, great work! :)

I'd love to see a tutorial to set up a minetest.land sub-domain though - the process seems to be a little too complex for the average home-server owners/admins, as this initiative is targeted primarily at them...

[DrFrankenstone]

Yeah, it's pretty easy while appearing very scary and technical.

I'll look at adding a step-by-step tutorial for FreeDNS, perhaps to the Minetest wiki, and link to that page.

[ANAND]

Yeah, it's pretty easy while appearing very scary and technical.

I'll look at adding a step-by-step tutorial for FreeDNS, perhaps to the Minetest wiki, and link to that page.

That would be great, thanks! :)

[DrFrankenstone]

I've added a step by step guide to the wiki.

Sometimes it's hard to know which parts people will find confusing, so if anyone has feedback on the guide, or any confusion or difficulties faced while trying to register a domain name, let me know.

Positive feedback is also useful - I haven't linked to the guide from anywhere yet (except here).

[ANAND]

I've added a step by step guide to the wiki.

Sometimes it's hard to know which parts people will find confusing, so if anyone has feedback on the guide, or any confusion or difficulties faced while trying to register a domain name, let me know.

Positive feedback is also useful - I haven't linked to the guide from anywhere yet (except here).

That's a very comprehensive guide, thanks!

I'll give it a try and let you know. :)

[PETE]

I've added a step by step guide to the wiki.

Sometimes it's hard to know which parts people will find confusing, so if anyone has feedback on the guide, or any confusion or difficulties faced while trying to register a domain name, let me know.

Positive feedback is also useful - I haven't linked to the guide from anywhere yet (except here).

That's a very comprehensive guide, thanks!

I'll give it a try and let you know. :)

Are you going to make a server?

[Sokomine]

Thank you for the subdomain! I've already added one for me to use in case of need.

[LMD]

So I'm allowed to make a subdomain magicctf.minetest.land ? 0.0 Thanks very much !
EDIT : How can I redirect to the Magic-CTF Website if the subdomain is accessed from a browser ??

[DrFrankenstone]

You can either use the Web Forward feature:


or you could have magicctf.minetest.land resolve to the IP address of your computer/server, and have your server support both minetest connections and web browser connections (they happen on different ports). It depends what you want to do, because while you have it using FreeDNS's built-in Web Forward feature the IP address of the subdomain will point at their forwarder rather than at your computer.

Create yourself some subdomains and play around with them.

This URL --> http://www.minetest.land is an example of using Web Forward, it forwards you to https://buildingwithblocks.info/minetest.land/.

(in this example it's using a 'cloaked' forward, which means that instead of sending your browser to the target website, FreeDNS create a webpage that will display the target website inside it. The advantage of doing it the cloaked way is the url in the browser window doesn't change like it would with a proper 'uncloaked' web redirection, but I think a cloaked forward might be less robust - I've seen Privacy Badger call shenanigans on the behavior and block it once - though it seems to allow it now)

[LMD]

You can either use the Web Forward feature:


or you could have magicctf.minetest.land resolve to the IP address of your computer/server, and have your server support both minetest connections and web browser connections (they happen on different ports). It depends what you want to do, because while you have it using FreeDNS's built-in Web Forward feature the IP address of the subdomain will point at their forwarder rather than at your computer.

Create yourself some subdomains and play around with them.

This URL --> http://www.minetest.land is an example of using Web Forward, it forwards you to https://buildingwithblocks.info/minetest.land/.
yourname
(in this example it's using a 'cloaked' forward, which means that instead of sending your browser to the target website, FreeDNS create a webpage that will display the target website inside it. The advantage of doing it the cloaked way is the url in the browser window doesn't change like it would with a proper 'uncloaked' web redirection, but I think a cloaked forward might be less robust - I've seen Privacy Badger call shenanigans on the behavior and block it once - though it seems to allow it now)

Thanks for the quick response ! Added web forwarding to the Magic-CTF subdomain.

[scr267]

Thanks also! Very very helpful and handy!