Hey everyone,
my TikFu is letting me down on this one. I need visitors to fill out a Google Form. Electronic distribution of the link is not practical. But even in it’s shortened form people will still have a hard time typing in the 16 or so characters if I print it out on a sheet of paper and hang it at the door.
So I thought perhaps there is a way for the RouterOS DNS facility to translate the URL before querying the outside DNS server for it. I.e. have people type in
visitor.form
Router translates this to
forms.gle/klEG342jklad5332
And browser gets directed to the correct form.
Beyond type A records, FWD and the TXT record I have limited experience in this field. I’d like to avoid having to use the web proxy but I’m not sure if it’s possible.
Any pointers greatly appreciated!!
If no MikroTik solution to your problem pops up, may I suggest printing out a QR code instead of an URL?
I already thought of a QR however the link was supposed to be universal and to also work on local PCs.
But I think I already have my answer: not doable in DNS facility alone.
Translating the domain name is easy with a CNAME. However this only takes care of the docs.google.com part (can’t use forms.gle cause that’s a dynamic link) but not what comes after the slash. Which incidentally doesn’t get sent to the DNS server by the browser but to the webserver itself AFTER the domain name has been resolved to an IP address.
So the only way to really make such a URL translation is by using a third party translator, at which point you get stuck with foreign domain names like bit.ly and gibberish like 43hj2ju representing the shortened URL.
