domainagen.com HTMX+GO Domain Owners Site

See what had happen was...

As an aspiring developer emerging from the wire closets and data centers, I have always loved how quickly an idea can become a reality with software. Infrastructure projects take time to execute and lots of planning, while buying a domain and deploying a website is rather instantaneous. So what do you do when you have a bunch of ideas without building, you end up with too many domains. That's how the hoarding starts.

In order to build out on those ideas and to make use of those domains, I had to start learning to code. Not in the way I tried and failed in the past. What I needed was to focus on one language and that's when I came across ThePrimeagen. After returning from a training exercise with the Navy Seals where I helped them with radio and satellite comms on an unmanned surface vessel, I was itching to do more with code than before. I had written a status page for the USVs and created scripts to manage log files in the system, and wanted to learn how to merge the two. That's when ThePrimeagen introduced me to Golang.

Soon thereafter, that same strimmer brought up HTMX and it seemed what held me back before was no longer a threat. Those times I tried to learn web development only to be overwhelmed by JSON APIs and javascript were now a thing of the past. Why can't the server respond with HTML? I quickly dove in, bought the book, and started reading. With a network engineering background the attention to the protocol was the appeal of HTMX. Even though it uses javascript to bring the fullness of the HTTP protocol to light, hopefully it will become standard without scripting in the near future. Call me old fashioned but how can we advance the technology if what we build on is incomplete.

Since that introduction in March 2024, I've been working with Golang, and Python, and NextJS boilerplates to find that sometimes the ports used in local development may conflict. Keeping track of them is similar in a way to keeping track of domain names. And then came the idea to build something that would help manage them both. Domainagen (& Localhostagen) was born. I originally thought to keep them separate, but development of Domainagen made it easier for me to visualize the two services together. Now here we are.

If you are developing new apps and services locally, or have a number of domains you are managing across multiple registrars, then this service is there to help you keep track of it all. It's a simple tool, and could easily be done in a spreadsheet as I've done in the past, yet there may be space for new useful features and I hope you'll let me know how it can improve to be a tool for you. Either way, we all can benefit from advancing technology in a way that benefits you. Thanks!