Resolve Public Domain with Local DNS

#DNS #domain #local

If you've ever done self hosting and have bought a public domain, soon enough you'll come across resolving issues when you're on said home network.

For example, let's say you just purchased shiny-new-domain.com and you point that domain to your home IP address to get the static site. Now when you try to go to http://shiny-new-domain.com it takes a round trip through the external registry just to come all the way back home.

With Nginx Proxy Manager and Pi-hole you can locally resolve this domain so it uses local IP address. Traffic never leaves your home.

Local CNAME record

I'm going to add one more step here. I am able to create a local record proxy.lan so that it's easy to remember and replace if I ever need to swap in a different proxy server.

Pi-hole https://pi.hole/admin/settings/dnsrecords
local DNS records
1. Domain = proxy.lan, IP = 192.168.0.101
Local CNAME records
1. Domain = shiny-new-domain.com, Target = proxy.an

Test with dig

Test to see if it's working. the "ANSWER SECTION:" will let you know each travel step. You should only see local IP addresses.

dig shiny-new-domain.com @192.168.0.101

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> shiny-new-domain.com @192.168.0.101
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1434
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;shiny-new-domain.com.            IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
shiny-new-domain.com.     0       IN      CNAME   proxy.lan.
proxy.lan.              0       IN      A       192.168.0.100

;; Query time: 55 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.2#53(192.168.1.2)
;; WHEN: Mon Jul 27 20:32:17 CDT 2026
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 86

192.168.0.100 is the PC that runs Nginx Proxy Manager