Deskmode Pro Suite – Customize & Secure Your WordPress Admin
A WordPress admin plugin to Customize and secure your WordPress dashboard
Check the DNS records of a domain
WHOIS, DNS and SSL without leaving the dashboard
One screen to query an IP address or a domain: reverse DNS, country, ISP, AS number, DNS records, certificate expiry and blacklist status.No second diagnostic plugin, and no third-party website to paste a client's IP into.
How network tools works
Two panels: one for IPs, one for domains
The Network Info page holds two independent lookups. Both run server-side, both are restricted to users who can manage options, and every request is nonce-checked. Input is validated as an IP address or a domain name before anything leaves your server.
IP, DNSBL and AS lookup
- Reverse DNS (PTR): when no record exists the screen says so, instead of leaving the field blank.
- Country and country code, region, city, ISP and organisation.
- AS number, with the matching point on an OpenStreetMap view.
- How many domains resolve to the same address — telling a dedicated attacker apart from a shared host.
- Five mail blacklists checked in one pass:zen.spamhaus.org, bl.spamcop.net, b.barracudacentral.org, dnsbl.sorbs.net, cbl.abuseat.org.
Run a WHOIS lookup on a domain
- A real port-43 query: it starts at IANA to find the authoritative server for the extension, falls back to a built-in map for common TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .it, .eu, .de, .fr, .uk, .io and more) and follows the registrar referral when the registry returns one.
- Registrar, registration and expiry dates, domain status, nameservers and the full raw record.
- DNS records read from the resolver at query time: A, AAAA, MX with priority, TXT and NS.
- SSL certificate read over a direct TLS connection on port 443: issuer, expiry date and days remaining.
Autonomous System detail
Click the AS name and you get the operator, its country and website, the regional registry, the allocation date, the last update and how many IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes it announces. Data comes from BGPView, with RIPEstat as a fallback when the first source is unavailable.
Light by design
- Everything is cached: IP data and DNSBL results for six hours, DNS for three, WHOIS for twelve, the SSL check for six. Looking up the same address twice costs one request, not two.
- The map library ships with the plugin — only the tiles come from OpenStreetMap, and no third-party script is loaded into your admin.
- Geolocation, AS lookup, blacklist zones and cache lifetimes are exposed as filters, so you can point them at your own infrastructure.
External services: geolocation uses ip-api.com, AS data comes from BGPView or RIPEstat, and the shared-hosting count uses HackerTarget. Only the address or domain you type is sent — never visitor data, never site content.
Frequently asked
Network tools: the questions we get most
Five answers on WHOIS, DNS records, certificates and how fresh the data you see actually is.
Can I run a WHOIS lookup on a domain from the dashboard?
Yes, and it is a genuine port-43 query — the WHOIS protocol described in RFC 3912 — not a third-party page scraped and reprinted. The lookup starts at IANA to find the authoritative server for the extension, falls back to a built-in map for the common ones (.com, .net, .org, .it, .eu, .de, .fr, .uk, .io and more), and follows the registrar referral when the registry returns one.
You get the registrar, registration and expiry dates, domain status, nameservers and the full raw record — the one you need when the parsed fields aren’t enough.
How do I check the DNS records of a domain?
In the same panel, alongside the WHOIS. They are read from the resolver at query time: A, AAAA, MX with priority, TXT and NS. Those five cover ninety-five per cent of what you need, from working out where a domain points to confirming that an SPF record is actually there.
Results stay cached for three hours. That is the right compromise: short enough to notice a change that has just propagated, long enough not to hit the resolver on every page reload.
How do I check an SSL certificate expiry date?
The plugin opens a direct TLS connection on port 443 and reads the certificate: issuer, expiry date and days remaining. It doesn’t trust what the hosting panel claims, it looks at what the server actually answers.
The same figure appears in the dashboard widget, coloured as a warning under thirty days and an alert under fifteen — so you find out about a missed renewal before your client does, rather than after their phone call.
How is this different from the lookup sites I use now?
Technically the data is the same, because the source is the same. Two practical things change. The first is that you don’t leave WordPress, copy an address and come back: when you are working through a suspicious login attempt, those steps add up.
The second concerns your clients’ privacy: pasting a client’s domain or IP into a free website hands it to a service whose practices you don’t know. Here the query leaves from your own server.
Is the data I see up to date?
Each kind of data has its own cache lifetime, chosen according to how often it genuinely changes: DNS three hours, WHOIS twelve, the SSL certificate six, IP data and blacklists six. Looking up the same domain twice within a few minutes costs one request rather than two.
Every lifetime is adjustable through a filter, along with the endpoints used, so you can shorten them if you work on migrations and need to watch propagation almost in real time.