What can a web server tell you?

When your browser communicates with a web server, some information is exchanged even before the first <html> code is received. Like what, for instance?


What can a domain name tell you?

According to Verisign there are about 370 million domain names registered in total in 2021. A domain name like google.com inspires trust, a name like westealyourdata.tk totally not, (although one could argue both seem to have the same business model) but there’s a large gray zone between those extremes. So what can you know about a domain name before you even visit it?


What can an IP address tell you?

Whenever you visit a website, it is your browser communicating with a web server. Your browser knows what server to talk to by taking the domain name, e.g. mail.google.com, and asking a DNS server for the associated IP address. This IP address will tell the browser where to send its network traffic to.


Starting Churlie

The idea of Churlie started back in March 2018. That’s when I registered the domain name. But actually it started earlier. I was talking often with Ine about an idea I had to manage portfolios of websites. I was responsible for some 50 websites professionally and another dozen for me personally. Ine had something similar, she had worked as a freelancer on dozens of websites, for some of which she was still responsible for the hosting / content updates. How to keep track of all these?