5 tools every web developer should know about

Check DNS records with MX Toolbox

Contrary to the name, you can actually look up all types of DNS (A, MX, CNAME, etc) records with mxtoolbox.com. Just prefix the domain name with the type of entry you’re looking for. Replace “domain.com” with your own search:

• a:domain.com
• mx:domain.com
• dns:domain.com
• etc…

It’s part of our standard toolkit before and after site migrations to make sure we keep all the existing DNS entries intact. It’s also useful for seeing if changes to the DNS entries are taking effect.

Look back in time with archive.org

Travel back in time with the Wayback Machine. Just enter any domain name and it will show you any snapshots it’s taken. It keeps all of the source code and most of the images, so it can do for a “backup” for a website in a pinch. At the very least you’ll be able to retrieve old copy and images.

Access a down website from Google cache

Need a bit of info but the website is down? Maybe it was a viral hit on Facebook or Reddit and exceeded its bandwidth limits. Or did you accidentally nuke a page while making some edits? Google keeps recent copies of every page it indexes. Just search up the domain name or the full page address. Click on the little green arrow next to the results and click on “Cached”.

Make “Live” edits to any web page with Chrome Inspector

You can do quick edits on a page with Google Chrome’s built-in inspector tool. Right click on any element and click on “Inspect Element”. From the inspector window you can make edits to the HTML or CSS. This is great for seeing changes to your page without firing up the code editor. You can also use it for removing pesky pop ups blocking access to content.

Do a WHOIS search from the terminal (Mac)

Last but not least is a handy command for Mac users to look up whois records from the command line. Open the Terminal app and type:

whois domain.com

Hit enter and you’ll see all the whois info available for the domain name. You can also use it to see if a domain name is available. If no records are returned, the name is not registered.